The People at Number 9

“So that’ll be quite nice, don’t you think?” Sara said to Neil when they were alone again and she was stacking the dirty plates in the dishwasher, “dinner tonight. Just the four of us?”

“We were only round there last night,” said Neil.

“Yeah, us and fifty other people.”

“I just don’t get what the hurry is.”

“There isn’t any hurry, but nor is there any reason to say no. Unless we want to say no.”

“And in fact you’ve already said yes.”

“Well, not yes as such. I said I’d ask you.”

“Thanks very much. So now if we don’t go, they’ll think I’m a miserable bastard.”

Sara raised a meaningful eyebrow.

With a sigh, Neil returned to his task of scraping the leathery remnants of fried egg from the base of the pan.

“Neil, they’re nice, interesting people and they want to be our friends. I’m trying, I really am, but I’m struggling to see anything negative in that.”

Neil shrugged resignedly. He was a simple soul really – affable, straightforward, curious. He had constructed a credible carapace of manliness, which, on the whole, he wore pretty lightly. When he picked up a work call at home (which he seldom did), it was impossible to tell whether he was talking to his PA or to the Chairman. This, really, rather than the recent improvement in tenant satisfaction ratings, or the number of newbuilds completed under his jurisdiction, was the reason he was a shoo-in for the big job. The downside of his instinctive and wholly laudable egalitarianism, however, was, in Sara’s view, his reluctance to recognise that some people just were exceptional.

“Eleven o’clock, absolute latest, okay?” he muttered to Sara, as they stood on Lou and Gavin’s doorstep for the second time in twenty-four hours.

“Hell-o-o-o!” Neil said, as Lou opened the door and you would have thought there was nowhere he would rather be. He handed his hostess a bottle of wine and kissed her on both cheeks – a little camply, Sara thought.

“I brought dessert,” Sara told Lou, when it was her turn, “I thought, you know, with all the clearing up you’d had to do… it’s nothing fancy, just some baked figs and mascarpone.”

“Oh thanks.” Her hostess looked surprised and faintly amused. In truth, she didn’t appear to have done much clearing up. The house looked only marginally less derelict than it had when Sara had delivered Zuley back that morning. Empty bottles were stacked in crates beside the front door and a row of black bin-bags bulged beside them. A wet towel and a jumble of Lego lay at the foot of the stairs. The kitchen was chilly and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. No cooking smells, no piles of herbs or open recipe book hinted at treats to come. If it weren’t for the fact that Lou had obviously taken a certain amount of care with her appearance, Sara might almost have thought they had come on the wrong night, but Lou looked gorgeous – like a sexy sea lion, hair slicked back with product, eyes kohl-rimmed, in a tie-necked chiffon blouse and jeans, which could not have contrasted more sharply with the eye-popping maxi dress she had worn the night before. She had the enviable knack, Sara had noticed, of making every outfit she wore utterly her own.

Lou ushered them in and Sara and Neil sat down a little gingerly, on grubby chairs at a kitchen table still littered with half-eaten pizza crusts and spattered with juice.

“Shall I open this?” Lou asked, waving their wine bottle at them. “Or are you in the mood for more fizz?”

She flung open the door of the fridge and pulled out a half-full bottle of Krug.

“A party with booze left over,” Neil said. “Must be getting old.”

“Or more catholic in our tastes,” said Lou with an enigmatic smile. She filled three glasses and handed them round.

Watching her hostess pad around the kitchen, to the strains of John Coltrane, the grimy lino sucking at her bare feet, Sara found herself at once repelled by the squalor and intrigued by Lou’s indifference to it. She wondered what it might be like to live like this – to dress how you pleased and eat when you felt like it, and invite people round on a whim. There was, after all, a certain charm in the larky informality of it all, in stark contrast to Carol’s well-choreographed “pot luck” suppers. Lou cheerfully admitted to being “rubbish” at entertaining. She had once, she said over her shoulder, arms elbow-deep in washing-up water, served undercooked pork to Javier Bardem and given him worms. Once again, Sara found herself at a loss for words.

By the time Gavin bounded into the room, at 8.05, wearing jeans and a creased linen shirt the colour of bluebells, dusk had darkened the windows and Lou had brought about a transformation. She had cleared the table and put a jug of anemones and a squat amber candle on it. Around this centrepiece, she had placed terracotta dishes of olives, anchovies and artichokes, as well as a breadboard with a crusty loaf. All it took was for Gavin to draw the blinds and pour more wine and suddenly the atmosphere was one of gaiety and promise – the room felt like a barge or a gypsy caravan – some ad hoc combination, at any rate, of home and vehicle, in which the four of them were setting out on a journey. Now the informality of their reception felt less like negligence and more like a huge compliment. Gavin caught his wife around the waist and kissed her neck, glugged back most of a glass of wine, changed the music on the stereo and began to cook.

As the candles burned down and the alcohol undid the kinks in the conversation, Sara stopped worrying about her choice of outfit and Neil’s unappealing habit of sucking the olive juice off his fingers, and started to enjoy herself. The tone of the evening became relaxed and confessional. She heard herself admit, with a careless giggle that she’d been intimidated when Gav and Lou had first moved in.

“By us?” Lou looked askance. “Why on earth…?”

“Oh, you know – the car you drive, the way you dress…” Sara said, “… the stag’s head above your fireplace!”

“That’s Beryl,” replied Lou, dismissively, “no one could be intimidated by Beryl. She’s cross-eyed and she’s got mange on one antler. As for the Humber, I can’t even remember how we ended up with that…”

“Damien was getting rid of it,” Gav reminded her, “and we were feeling flush...”

“That’s right!” said Lou, “because you’d just won the Tennent’s Sculpture Prize. So you see, pretty random really. Anyway, Madam,” she said, leaning forward in her seat and fixed Sara with a gimlet eye, “it cuts both ways, let me tell you. That day you first spoke to me, remember?” Sara did. “I was a nervous wreck!” Lou glanced at Neil and Gavin, as if for affirmation. “There she was, all colour-co-ordinated and spiffy from the school run, and me looking like shit in my filthy work clothes and, what’s her name? Carol, watching me like a hawk from across the road. I felt like I was auditioning for something. And then you invited me round for a drink and I was, like, yesss!”

Sara didn’t know what to do with this information. She blushed with pleasure and pushed a crumb around the table with her forefinger.

“Well,” said Gav huffily, “if no one’s going to tell me how fucking marvellous I am, I suppose I’d better serve the dinner.”

They laughed. He had a knack for putting people at their ease, Sara had noticed. She’d imagined an artist to be the tortured, introverted type but Gav was neither. You couldn’t call him charming, quite, because there was no magic about it, no artifice. He was just easy in his skin and made you easier in yours. He pottered about the kitchen, humming under his breath, pausing occasionally to toss some remark over his shoulder, and then served up a fragrant lamb tagine as casually as if it were beans on toast. When at last he sat down, he didn’t hold forth about himself or his opinions, but quizzed Neil about his work, with every appearance of genuine curiosity.

“I just think it’s great how you guys give back,” Gav said, shaking his head with admiration.

“Oh, I’m no Mother Teresa…” Neil protested, through a mouthful of food. “It’s important work, don’t get me wrong, and I believe in it one hundred per cent, but they pay me pretty well. And if you heard the grief I get from some of the anarchists on the tenants’ associations, you’d think I was bloody Rachman…”

“Rachman?” Lou skewered a piece of lamb on her fork and looked up, inquiringly.

“He was a notorious private landlord in the fifties,” Neil explained, “became a byword for slum housing and corruption. I did my PhD on how he influenced the law on multiple occupancy. It was fascinating actually.”

“Neil, you can’t say your own PhD was fascinating,” Sara murmured.

“I meant doing it was fascinating.”

“So you’re Doctor Neil,” Gav said. “Very impressive. I can’t imagine having the staying power for something like that.”

“It was a bit of a slog,” Neil conceded. “Then again, I don’t suppose you leaped fully-formed from your mother’s womb wielding a paintbrush…?”

“Too true mate, and if my mother had had anything to do with it, I’d have leapt out with a brickie’s hod instead.”

He put on a broad Lancashire accent, “‘Learn a trade, our Gavin, if you want to put food on’t table.’”

“But you do put food on the table, as an artist,” said Sara. “Surely your parents must be proud of that?”

“What do you reckon, Lou?” He turned to his wife with a rueful smile. “Are they proud?”

“We wouldn’t know, would we?” said Lou coldly.

“Lou gets very indignant on my behalf. The truth is they don’t really get it. If I was a doctor or a lawyer, I’m sure they’d be pleased, but my mum’s idea of art’s a herd of horses galloping through surf, so…”

“She knows you’ve done well,” Lou muttered, “wouldn’t kill her to say so.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Gav said, shrugging. “I always played second fiddle to our Paula, anyway.”

“Is that your sister?” asked Sara. “What does she do?”

“She’s just a primary-school teacher,” Lou interjected, “but to hear Gav’s mum, you’d think she walked on water.” She mimicked her mother-in-law with unsparing sarcasm: “‘Our Paula’s doing an assembly on multiculturalism, Gavin. Our Paula’s taking the kids to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.’ No mention of the fact that Gav’s got a piece in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Never occurs to her that she might actually stop playing online bingo for two minutes and go and have a look herself.”

“Lulu,” Gavin put a hand on her arm, “it’s no big deal.”

Lou’s eyes were glittering.

“That does seem a bit unfair,” said Sara, doubtfully.

“Not really.” Gavin shrugged. “I mean, artists aren’t very useful, are we? People don’t actually need art.”

“God Gavin,” Lou fumed, “I hate it when you put yourself down. You’re an important contemporary artist, represented by a top gallery.”

“I know,” Gavin laughed, “and I never stop wondering when they’re going to rumble me.”

“What do you mean?” Neil asked.

“Well honestly, what is it I do? Just muck about really, like those kids our Paula teaches. I just haul my guts up in three dimensions; I play around with bits of old rubbish until they start to look like the things I fear or loathe or love and then I put them out there and amazingly, people seem to get it.”

“Some people,” said Lou.

“Well,” said Neil, draining his wineglass and placing it decisively back down on the table. “Sara’s too shy to ask, so I will. When are we going to get a look at your studio?”

“Neil!” Sara turned to him indignantly.

“Haven’t you seen it yet?” Gavin seemed surprised. “Oh no, you haven’t, have you? That was Stephan and Yuki. Come on then!”

He slapped his thighs and stood up. So much for their banter last evening, Sara thought – the Chelsea oligarchs long forgotten. Nevertheless, she couldn’t quell a fluttering in her stomach as she rose, unsteadily, to follow him. She only wished she were feeling her bright, articulate best, instead of fuzzy with drink. As she wove her way towards the spiral staircase which led to the studio, she tried to recall some of the aperçus she had read when she’d googled his latest show, but the only phrase that sprang to mind was “spastic formalism”, and she couldn’t see that tripping off her tongue. Lou dried her hands on a tea towel and moved to join them, but Gav turned to her with a look of pained regret.

“Do you think maybe one of us should stay up here in case Zuley wakes up?”

“Oh…okay,” Lou gave him a tight little smile and turned away. Sara struggled to shake off the feeling that she had somehow usurped her friend, but that was silly – Lou must be up and down these stairs all the time, she would hardly wait on an invitation from her own husband.

Her qualms were quickly overtaken by astonishment and fascination when they emerged, not into the picturesque, messy studio of her imagination but into a stark, brightly lit space more reminiscent of a morgue. She could see at a glance that a lot of money had been spent here. There were the specialist tungsten light fittings, the open drains running down each side of the concrete floor, the coiled, wall-mounted hose and gleaming stainless-steel sinks. There were rolls of mesh, and rows of white-stained buckets, and in the centre of the room a large zinc workbench, on which lay the only evidence of what you might call, if you were feeling generous, creative endeavour. Sara edged forward to get a closer look. She could see what appeared to be a rudimentary human form made out of wire mesh, which protruded here and there through a slapdash layer of fibrous plaster. It reminded her, both in its diminutive size – about two-thirds that of an actual human, and its tortured attitude – of the writhing, petrified bodies she had seen in the ruins of Pompeii.

“Gosh!” she said.

“I suppose this is a work in progress?” said Neil hopefully.

Gavin smirked.

“And if I told you it’s the finished article?”

“I’d say I don’t know much about art, but I know when someone’s taking the piss,” said Neil affably. Sara darted him an anxious glance, but Gavin was laughing.

“You’d be right,” he said. “Come and have a look at this.”

He led them through a swing door, into a space three times the size of the first room. Neil emitted a low whistle.

“What I can’t get over,” he said afterwards, as they sat up in bed, discussing their new friends with the enthusiasm of two anthropologists who have stumbled on a lost tribe, “is the scale of it. I mean, I knew it had to be big – all the earthworks; the noise – but I didn’t realise it would be that big. The plumbing alone must have cost…” He closed one eye, but bricks and mortar was his specialist subject and it didn’t take him long, “… four or five K and they must need a mother of a transformer for those lights. I’m glad I’m not paying the bills.”

“I know,” said Sara, “but what gets me is the contrast. That really practical work-space and then you see the end-product and it’s so moving, so human.”

“Right,” said Neil doubtfully.

“Didn’t you like it?”

“No, I did. It’s just… I didn’t get why… he’s obviously a consummate craftsman … and yet on some of them the finishing looked quite rough and ready.”

“Oh I think that’s deliberate,” said Sara, “because others were really meticulous, really anal. And I think the ones covered with the mirror mosaic-y things were meant to be sort of fractured and damaged in a way. Don’t you think?”

Neil shrugged.

“Beats me,” he said, “but you’ve got to take your hat off to him. The nerve. The confidence. To take on a mortgage like they must have, knowing you’ve got four dependants…”

“Lou works,” Sara objected.

“Yeah, in film,” he said. “And then to blow a ton of money kitting out the studio like it’s a private hospital, and all for…” he shrugged “… something so particular, so rarefied. I mean, how does he know people are going to get it?”

“Oh people get it,” said Sara, “I’ve looked him up online. He’s in the top fifty most collectable living artists.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Neil said, “I admired it. I’m just not sure I understood it.”

“Oh I did…” Sara said. She took a deep breath “… I definitely think he’s obsessed with mortality. And then I think there’s quite a lot about the sacred and the profane. I mean the writhing, emaciated ones – I think must be referencing Auschwitz or something, and then you’ve got the ones with the wings – they’re angels, obviously – but maybe fallen angels because there’s a sordidness about them, a sense of shame. My favourite – the one that really spoke to me – was that one with all the tiny toys stuck to it and whitewashed over, did you see that? It looked kind of diseased until you got up close and saw what they really were. That, to me, was about childhood, about how we’re all formed and scarred by our early experiences. I think he’s actually very courageous.”

“Ok-a-ay,” said Neil.

5

It was the start of the autumn term and Sara had promised to show Gavin the ropes. The school run was his thing, apparently. Over the course of the summer, they had forged a firm rapport, yet finding him on her doorstep bright and early this crisp September morning, she found herself unaccountably tongue-tied.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s not raining, is it?” Gavin frowned, held out his hand and scanned the cloudless sky.

“I think we’re okay.”

Sara ushered Patrick and Caleb out of the door, fussing unnecessarily over their lunchboxes and book bags to cover her awkwardness, then fell into step with Zuley’s buggy.

The day might have been warm, but the street was done with summer. The privet hedges were laced with dust and the trees held onto their leaves with an air of reluctance. The long grass in front of the council flats had snagged various items of litter. Here and there a car roof box, as yet un-dismantled, recalled the heady days of August in Carcassonne or Cornwall, but for the commuters hurrying by, earphones in, heads down, the holidays were ancient history.

Only Gavin, in his canvas shorts and flip-flops still seemed to inhabit the earlier season. Sara stole occasional glances at him as he strode along. She liked the way he gave the buggy an extra hard shove every few steps to make Zuley laugh, the way he gave his sons the latitude to surge fearlessly ahead, but pulled them up short with a word when they got out of hand. He might not spend that much time around his children, she thought, but he was a good parent when he did; a better one, probably, than Lou. To the casual observer he could be any old self-employed Dad – a web designer or a journalist. She hugged to herself the knowledge of his exceptionalness.

“So you didn’t get away in the end?” he said. “That’s a pity.”

“No,” Sara sighed, “Neil wanted me and the kids to go without him, but I wasn’t up for a busman’s holiday. We just stayed here and I took them swimming and did the museums and stuff. Lost our deposit on the cottage, but…” she said, shrugging, “... not the end of the world.”

She had been less phlegmatic when Neil had told her, with days to go, that he couldn’t make it to Dorset after all. A mix-up over the holiday rota at work – not his fault, but if he wanted to send the right message, improve his chances of getting the big job, he’d have to lead from the front.

“Sounds like you had a lovely time,” she said, wistfully.

“Yeah. Great to catch up with old mates,” Gav agreed.

They turned the corner, passing the bus shelter where shiny Year Sevens waited for the 108 in over-sized uniforms, like lambs to the slaughter.

“Where was it you went again?”

She knew perfectly well. Tom and Rhiannon’s place in the Lake District. She’d had the full account – the walk up Helvellyn, the skinny-dipping, the toasted marshmallows. She had managed to disguise her envy; had smiled, nodded, agreed with Lou that they should definitely all get up there some time, the six of them and that Tom and Rhiannon sounded lovely.

“The Lakes,” Gav said with a shrug. “Weather was terrible.”

She could have kissed him.

“Neil still odds-on for promotion?” he asked, as they waited at the pedestrian crossing for the man to turn green.

“Looks like it,” she admitted, embarrassed. What, after all, could promotion mean to a man like Gavin? A man for whom success was measured in the raising of hairs on the back of a neck, the falling of scales from the eyes?

They shepherded the children across the road and quickly past the newsagent’s, ignoring their clamour for sweets.

“Smart guy, your husband,” Gav said.

Sara gave him a curious sideways glance.

“No, really, I admire him,” Gavin insisted, “he’s got integrity. Doggedness. Do I mean dogged?”

Sara shrugged.

“He commits to things – his work, his family, the community. I admire that…”

“So, are you a quitter?” Sara blurted.

“Because we left Spain, you mean?” Gavin frowned, after a pause.

Sara looked away, her cheeks hot. She always did this; overstepped the mark, said the wrong thing. A harassed-looking woman came out of her thirties semi, still tucking her shirt into her smart skirt. She waited, with barely disguised irritation, for their procession to pass so that she could reach her car and Sara gave her a meek smile of thanks.

“I didn’t mean that,” Sara said now, turning back to Gav. “Of course you’re not a quitter. Your commitment’s obvious. To Lou; to your work – my God, nobody could doubt your commitment to your work.”

“So you think I’m obsessed?”

“No! Good grief, but even if you were, it goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Artists are supposed to be driven. I mean, can you imagine,” she added, with a manic little laugh, “Picasso getting up in the morning and going, ‘Right, Françoise, shall I reinvent modern art today, or do you need a hand with the kids?’”

“I suppose…” he said, doubtfully, swivelling the buggy up the ramp and through the school gate.

“No, you’re fine. It’s us mere mortals who have to worry about work-life balance.”

“But you’re a writer,” Gavin shouted, above the din of the playground, and Sara winced, hoping no one heard.

“A copy-writer,” she corrected him, “day job comes first. Don’t know when I last got to do any of my own stuff. For all you think Neil’s such a family man, with this promotion in the offing, he’s around less and less. And when he is around, his head’s not around, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I get accused of that a lot.”

“Do you?” said Sara curiously. “I’d have thought with you both being creatives—hey, boys, don’t forget your bookbags…” but it was too late, her sons had disappeared into the mêlée.

“Not by Lou,” Gavin replied. “She’s got a sixth sense about that stuff. She gives me plenty of headspace. And I do her. No, it’s other people.”

“Oh,” said Sara, a little deflated. She couldn’t imagine who else would have dibs on Gavin’s headspace. Then again, there was still a lot about Gavin that mystified her. She could have gone on talking to him all day, but this was where they parted, he to deliver Zuley to her childminder, she to catch the 9.47 to Cannon Street.

“Well,” she said, briskly, “for what it’s worth, Neil really likes you too.”

Gavin gave her a grateful glance, and she saw that for all his biennales and his groupies and his five-star reviews, he was just as needy of reassurance and friendship as anyone else. The temptation to put out a hand and touch his skin was almost overwhelming.

“I see you’ve got her kids again,” Carol said, one teatime. She’d come over to see if Neil and Sara were interested in tickets for the new play at the Royal Court.

“I have, yes,” said Sara tartly, and then, in response to Carol’s meaningfully arched eyebrow, “it works really well. I have hers when she’s working. She hangs on to mine if I’m late back.”