Fen

‘Oh God,’ Fen cried, ‘what do I do? Smile? Wave? Ignore? Die? Loo? Home?’ Gemma took Fen’s left hand and gave it a quick but tight squeeze. ‘Has he seen me?’ Fen asked. ‘Has he?’

‘Delicious,’ Gemma said, not quite knowing if she should be raising a glass to Matt or his friend.

‘You certainly haven’t done him justice,’ said Abi, ‘you didn’t say about the facial hair.’

‘The other one, the other one!’ Fen said, wishing she could just stare at one spot and keep her eyes from continually flitting over to the boys.

‘I rather like the look of the-other-one-the-other-one,’ Gemma said, ‘I’ve never had a man with a goatee. I quite like them. I rather think they could tickle my fancy – if strategically placed.’

‘I’ve had one,’ Abi declared, ‘very strategically positioned. In fact, it tickled my fancy so much, I had a fit of the giggles and fanny-farted in his face.’

‘Shush!’ Fen pleaded. ‘Stop! Where are you going?’

‘Over there,’ Gemma said.

‘To make our acquaintance,’ Abi said, ‘to see if he passes muster and whether he warrants our seal of approval and, therefore, whether we grant you our go-ahead.’

‘Oh God, he’s seen me. I’m going to the loo,’ said Fen, who didn’t need to go and didn’t know why she wanted to disappear. She went, though, and stood by the sinks for a while trying to compose herself, compose what to say. She was simultaneously excited yet felt a certain timidity too. She was bemused.

Abi and Gemma were also bemused.

‘Shy? Fen?’

‘Why?’

‘That girl has spent far too long persuading herself that art nourishes her every need,’ said Gemma.

‘And she’s spent far too long listening to us bang on about the Inevitable Bastard Element Of All Males,’ said Abi, ‘though it’s a risk she’ll just have to take. I mean, we do, don’t we?’

‘We do,’ Gemma confirmed, ‘and it’s often Fen who picks us up when we’re in pieces.’

‘But we invariably go for the wrong ones,’ Abi rationalized.

‘And Fen doesn’t go for anyone at all,’ Gemma continued, ‘so, though Matt might not be a Wrong One, she probably doesn’t want to find out the hard way. Hence taking the easy route direct to the loo. Or home. Or back to the bronze of a nineteenth-century sculptor’s studio.’

‘Oh blimey,’ Abi sighed, ‘she might so be missing out!’

‘That’s the risk she’d probably rather take,’ Gemma qualified.

‘She won’t let us give her a helping hand,’ Abi mused, ‘so let’s just shove her right in there.’

Gemma regarded Abi, knowing the idea would be fine if it was she whom Abi was setting up, but just slightly concerned that they were meddling too deeply, too fast, for someone like Fen.

‘Feeling brazen?’ Abi asked slyly, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.

‘When am I not?’ Gemma sighed as if it was some great affliction, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.

Oh God, no!

Fen?

Cows!

What’s the problem?

They’re over there – with Matt and that bloke. I’m not prepared.

You can’t map out life like you plan a lecture, you know. See – Matt’s spotted you. He’s raising his glass. He’s grinning. They all are. Just a bunch of people chatting. Go and join them. Go on.

Sometimes, a good cliché is hard to beat. Sometimes, it’s priceless, especially if it is obvious that the person delivering it is doing so quite intentionally. Even more so, if they are doing so because it is quite obvious that they need it as a prop, a shield, without which they wouldn’t quite know what to say. Therefore, Matt’s opening line of ‘Fancy seeing you here’ – though it was met with Jake raising his eyebrows and Abi and Gemma swallowing down a snigger – made Fen grin.

‘Do you come here often then?’ she countered.

Refusing to be out-clichéd, Matt retorted, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’

Gemma couldn’t resist, ‘What makes you think that Fen is a nice girl?’ and Fen, who was floundering for a cliché to bat back, didn’t mind this in the least.

Jake murmured to Abi, ‘Can’t really say that nice girls are my bag. I like them naughty.’

‘I’m downright dirty, mate,’ Abi responded, staring at him straight before turning her back on him to give Matt the Spanish Inquisition.

‘What does Abi do?’ Jake asked Gemma.

‘She edits a teenage girls’ magazine,’ Gemma told him. ‘And you?’

‘Advertising,’ Jake said, ‘I’m afraid. You?’

‘I,’ said Gemma, pausing to make sure her lips were parted to great effect and that her eyes had darkened, ‘do most things. But I draw the line at animals.’

Matt and Fen talked mainly about work. But they nattered nineteen to the dozen and were excessively interested in what the other had to say. Even though some would argue that a noisy pub in Camden Town wasn’t quite the venue for a lecture on Fetherstone’s deconstructionist foray 1927–29. Nor was it a convivial setting for Matt’s stories of homesickness at boarding-school from the ages of nine to eleven. But the anonymity of the setting, the background noise, beer and vodka, the unexpectedness of it all, made it seem safe. Fun too.

‘See you in the morning, then,’ said Matt, because last orders had been and gone and the bar staff had stopped begging the punters to leave and were now demanding they do so.

‘Mine’s a cappuccino,’ said Fen cheekily, ‘and a pain au chocolat.’

She winked, did Fen McCabe. She even winked. She didn’t even think to marvel at the disappearance of all that previous timidity. But Gemma and Abi did. And they knew it could not be attributed to vodka alone. The girls walked home, Fen swelling with pride and joy as her friends assured her that Matt didn’t just pass muster but scored very highly on their excessively exacting set of standards.

‘Stringless sex?’ Jake tosses casually as he and Matt make their way down Parkway hoping to hail a cab before they reach Camden Town tube station and have to suffer the Northern Line to Angel. ‘Zipless fuck?’ Jake bandies yet detects a momentary discomfort in Matt. ‘Fanbelt Macbeth?’

Matt shrugs. ‘Taxi!’

‘Well, if you don’t, mind if I do?’ Jake hazards, not because he has any designs on Fen, but merely to elicit a response of more satisfying proportions from Matt.

‘Yes, I bloody do!’

Aha! Jake thinks. ‘You couldn’t have stringless sex with her anyway,’ he declares.

‘Why not?’ Matt says defensively.

‘Because she has you nicely knotted up already,’ Jake defines.

‘Sod off,’ says Matt, unnerved by Jake’s perception.

‘It’s true!’ Jake says. ‘So my advice is not to venture to Vanilla McCabe until you’ve had a good poke elsewhere.’ Matt hopes that his expression doesn’t register “why ever not?” but obviously it has. ‘You do need time out,’ Jake defines. ‘You can’t go from one straight into another. It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Jake assessed it was time to lighten up. ‘If she’s out of my bounds,’ Jake says, with a change of tone, ‘what about her flatmates then? The raven-headed sultry Gemma; the feisty blonde sprite, Abi?’

‘Be my guest,’ says Matt, relieved to deflect the attention away from himself and Fen. ‘Which one?’

‘Either,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.

Matt raises his eyebrows.

‘Both,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.

ELEVEN

Fen wasn’t quite sure what the score was with personal phone calls. Her job didn’t require much time on the telephone; just the occasional call, made or received, to a gallery or museum. But on this, the last day of her first week at Trust Art, Fen wanted desperately to make a call. Should she ask? Even if the response was laughter? Or a frown of disapproval? Would Bobbie’s switchboard sound the alarm, start flashing in another colour? Would Rodney scurry in and cry, ‘Good Grief! Fenella McCabe – we’re a charity. You are eating into funds that could be spent saving modern art for the nation!’ Was it a good excuse to pop along to Publications and ask Matt to specify the rules and regulations concerning communication equipment at Trust Art? Just an excuse, any, to pop along to Publications?

I’ll be quick. I only need to say a sentence. It’s too good to keep to myself.

Fen phoned Gemma at work, at the TV production company, though she had to hang on for an agonizing few minutes whilst Gemma was located.

‘Guess what!’ Fen whispered.

‘What?’ Gemma whispered back but had to repeat herself due to much background noise in the editing room.

‘Guess who came into work to find a cappuccino waiting on her desk, piping hot?’

‘Blimey, Fen,’ said Gemma, ‘I’d regard that as symbolic as a diamond ring, if I were you.’

Fen told Gemma to piss off and phoned Abi in search of less sarcasm.

‘But did he remember the pain au chocolat?’ was Abi’s response.

Fen told Abi to piss off and phoned her older sister Pip immediately, hoping for less cynicism and a distraction from her sudden concern over the lack of pain au chocolat.

‘Don’t read too much into it,’ said Pip thoughtfully.

Fen wanted to tell her sister to piss off, but knew Pip meant well and spoke from love as much as from experience. So she phoned her younger sister Cat, now craving a response that was neither sarcastic, cynical nor commonsensical.

To Fen’s delight, her sister cooed appreciatively (though privately Cat felt Fen was reading far too much into it) and said things like ‘He sounds gorgeous’ with the inflection in all the right places. Feeling bolstered, Fen had no need to further abuse the Trust’s trust in her use of their phone; she drank and savoured her cappuccino and then felt well equipped to commence her duties for the day. She didn’t feel like a pain au chocolat anyway. She’d had toast with her butter, for breakfast, as always she did, before leaving for work.

TO: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: caffeine

dear m, thanks for the essential caffeine injection – i’m whizzing through the files at twice the normal speed. for future reference, one sugar too, please. F McC

It took almost seven minutes, and three full edits, before Fen sent that one.

TO: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: caffeine allocation

dear f, and I thought you were sweet enough. M

Matt didn’t send that one.

TO: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: caffeine allocation

dear f, not only will I remember sugar, I’ll also make sure it’s not decaff. Must be the frothy topping that’s enabled you to feel so productive this morning. M

‘Oh God,’ Fen groaned quietly, hiding her head behind a sheaf of letters from 1965 between Lord Bessborough and Henry Holden discussing the gift of a Barbara Hepworth Pierced Form, ‘it was decaff, it was decaff.’

TO: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: RE: caffeine allocation

dear m, froth had fizzled away by the time I prized off the lid. and the pain au chocolat had mysteriously self-combusted because, though I searched in drawers and in a box marked 1965, there was not a crumb of evidence of its existence. f McC (hungry)

Fen fired that one off without so much as checking it.

TO: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: RE: RE: caffeine allocation

head hanging low with shame and remorse. No froth? No sugar? No caffeine? No p au c? Would a sandwich lunch make it up to you? If you haven’t already expired before you’ve made it to 1966? M

Fen actually printed that one off, folded it, slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans and reread it at ridiculously regular intervals during the morning. She also checked her e-mail with alarming regularity but her in-box remained empty.

Mind you, I haven’t responded to his last.

Playing hard to get, Fen McCabe?

No, just playing. It’s fun.

Of course she had a sandwich lunch with him. Sitting in the gardens of the flats opposite the Trust. Otter came too. But neither Fen nor Matt minded. Fen felt a certain pride that their chemistry should be witnessed and later commented on; Matt just didn’t mind that Otter was there. Otter, who adored Matt and, in just one working week, felt very tenderly towards Fen, nevertheless couldn’t resist a gossip and a little action. That a drama in miniature could be played out before his eyes, under his direction, fed the lascivious and puckish side of his nature. A necessary antidote to his daily grind of correcting punctuation and typos. It was therefore with careful timing and timbre of delivery, that he told Bobbie he would let her into a little secret. But he did so only when he knew Judith St John would be in earshot.

‘Love loiters along the corridors of Trust Art,’ he said in a hushed but knowing voice.

‘Ooh blimey!’ Bobbie exclaimed. ‘Who is it, Otter? I thought you was the only nancy boy here!’

‘I am!’ Otter declared proudly, laying a thin hand on Bobbie’s shoulder, which was padded extravagantly in the receptionist’s enduring homage to Joan Collins.

‘You swinging the other way then?’ Bobbie asked him almost accusatorily. She looked him up and down, hoping whomever he chose, of whichever sexual persuasion, would be someone kind who’d feed the poor duck with meat and at least two veg on a nightly basis.

‘Dearest Bobsleigh,’ said Otter, ‘’tisn’t me at all. But lust lurks, mark my words!’

‘Who?’ Bobbie whispered, eyes so wide that the false eyelashes on her upper lids all but meshed with her eyebrows. ‘Where?’

‘In. The. Archive,’ Otter defined, noticing that Judith’s head was unmistakably tilted though her hands rifled through the pile of post in her pigeon-hole. ‘Our Matthew has his eye on young Fenella. You mark my words.’

‘Ahh!’ Bobbie said, tutting with appreciation and high hopes for the young ’uns.

‘There’ll be all sorts of shenanigans behind the Archive shelving,’ Otter prophesied, noting with satisfaction that Judith, post in hand, was nevertheless standing stock-still. ‘Debauchery amongst the boxes,’ Otter offered as his parting shot, winking at Bobbie and walking past Judith as if she wasn’t there.

Not if I have anything to do with it, thought Judith, smiling somewhat disdainfully at Bobbie, whose only crime on this day was a Dynasty-style suit in a lurid cerise.

Judith had no need to go upstairs, but she swanned past Publications and waltzed into the Archive. ‘We don’t, as a rule, use the Trust phones for personal calls,’ she told Fen, ‘not even if it’s supposedly pre- or post official work hours. We’re a charity.’

‘I am so sorry,’ said Fen, wanting at once to be swallowed by the box on her lap and taken to the safety of 1966 (before she had been even a twinkle in her father’s eye).

‘You weren’t to know,’ said Judith, covering her triumph with a spite-sweet smile, ‘but you do now.’

If he doesn’t want me, he’s not having her. Not that I know if he wants me or not. Haven’t tried that one. Yet.

Judith swanned out of the Archive and into Publications, inviting Matt to the opening of the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern the following Tuesday evening.

‘Welcome to the end of your first working week,’ said Matt, who’d found the pretext of a missing hole punch as the excuse to visit the Archive for the second time since lunch. ‘We’re going to the pub for a—’

Fen’s phone silenced him and he soaked up her wide-eyed excitement at its ringing.

‘Archive?’ she said, almost with incredulity, on answering it.

‘Fen McCabe?’

‘Yes?’

I don’t recognize the voice yet he’s Fen-ing and not Fenella-ing me.

‘James Caulfield,’ the voice drawled. ‘I was told to call you by Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine – I think that’s the right order and the right quota of hyphens – at Calthrop’s. You know, or knew her.’

God! Margot! thought Fen, who really hadn’t thought about Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine since leaving the Courtauld.

God! Margot, thought James, who had thought of her on occasions when he couldn’t sleep.

‘It concerns three Fetherstones in my collection,’ he said, clearing his throat and rearranging his semi-hard cock in his trousers.

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