by Freya North
‘I've never been abroad,’ Petra said. ‘Please will you tell me a little about them, as I straighten them?’
‘Let's start here, in Tanzania,’ Lillian said, peering up at a painting. ‘I lived there forty years ago. I loved it. This is Mount Kilimanjaro at dawn. I sat beside the artist, under this baobab – or upside-down – tree as he painted.’
After that, whenever Petra visited, often twice or three times a week, the paintings she had previously righted were crooked again. Invariably one was more skewed than the others and that was the one that Lillian McNeil planned to talk about that day. Darcey rarely visited Mrs McNeil again. She swore Petra to secrecy, bunking off Pensioners' Link to meet her boyfriend for lunch at McDonald's instead.
From the tranquillity of Mrs McNeil's flat, Petra and Darcey walked straight into an overexcited buzz back at school. There was usually something going on in the school hall at lunch-times, but it was more likely to be drama or dance club or one of the classes practising a forthcoming assembly. In its hundred-year history, this was the first lunch-hour in which the school had been put at the disposal of five boys and their impressive array of rock-band paraphernalia. Miss Golding the music teacher, a sensitive creature for whom even Beethoven was a little too raucous, looked on in alarm as if fearing for the welfare of her piano and the girls' eardrums. While she backed herself away from the stage, her arms crossed and her eyebrows knitted, other members of staff bustled amongst the girls trying to calm the general fidget and squawk of anticipation. It was only when Miss Lorimar introduced the members of the band that the students finally stood silent and still.
‘These are very Noble Savages,’ their headmistress quipped, tapping the shoulders of the singer and the drummer. ‘First stop: Dame Alexandra Johnson's, next stop: Top of the Pops!’ She made a sound unsettlingly close to a giggle before clapping energetically. The girls were too gobsmacked to even cringe let alone applaud. But before Miss Lorimar had quite left the stage, before Miss Golding had time to cover her ears, the Noble Savages launched into their first number and the varnished parquet of the hall resounded to the appreciative thumping of three hundred sensibly shod feet. Just a few bars in and each member of the band had a fan club as yelps of ‘Oh my God, he's just so completely gorgeous,’ filtered through the throng like a virus. ‘I'm in love!’ Petra's friends declared while she nodded and grinned and bopped along. ‘God, I'm just so in love!’
Nuclear no! Arlo Savidge sang as Jonny Noble, on rhythm guitar, thrashed through powerful chords and Matt on drums hammered the point home.
Government you are meant
to seek peace
not govern mental.
Time to go! Nuclear no!
The girls went wild and the majority of them made a mental note to join CND at once. After thank-yous all round from the band, Jeremy skittled his fingers down the run of piano keys, took his hands right away for maximum drama and then crashed them back down in an echoing chord of ear-catching dissonance.
Jailed for their thoughts
Caged for their beliefs
Imprisoned behind bars of bigotry
But still their spirits fly
Set them free
Set them free
We must
Set them free.
The older girls were shaking their heads, while hormones and concern for political injustice sprang real tears to their eyes.
‘Free Nelson Mandela,’ Darcey said to Petra with a very grave nod.
Petra closed her eyes in silent supplication.
‘Do you think the drummer would like to free me of my virginity?’ Amy asked and her classmates snorted and laughed and gave her a hug.
‘Do you think the one with the red-and-white guitar would like me in a big red bow and nothing else?’ Alice asked.
‘Shh!’ Darcey hissed, beginning to sway. ‘It's a slowy.’
‘“Among the Flowers”,’ the singer announced, his eyes closed.
While gentle chords were softly strummed by Jonny, Arlo caressed the strings of his guitar. The sweetest melody wove its way through the crowd as “Among the Flowers” floated like petals through the hall. The harmonies seduced even Miss Golding who tipped her head and appraised the band with a timid smile. When Arlo began to sing, it was without the strident, Americanized preach of “Set Them Free” and “Nuclear No!”; instead it was deeper and pitch-perfect, wrought with emotion and, one felt, his true voice.
I see her walking by herself
In a dream among the flowers
Won't she wake
Won't she wake
And see how I wait
See how I wait
For her
Is she walking all alone
Is she lonely in the flowers
Can I wake her and take her
Take her with me through the flowers
Out of her dream
And into mine
Out of her dream
And into mine.
He sang with his eyes shut, his mouth so close to the microphone that occasionally his lips brushed right over its surface. Arlo only opened his eyes when the piano solo twinkled its romantic bridge between the verses. All eyes were on the band but the focus was on Arlo who had eyes for one girl alone.
Is he looking at me?
No, he's looking at me!
Fuck off, it's me he's looking at.
It's me, thought Petra, he's looking straight at me. Aren't you. Hullo.
‘Out of her dream,’ Arlo sang to Petra, ‘and into mine.’
Chapter Two
The morning after Petra sleepwalked towards Whetstone was the morning she would hear again “Among the Flowers” for the first time in seventeen years. But it wasn't the song that woke her, it was the telephone.
‘Where are you? It's bloody Wednesday – it's your day to open up so I didn't bother to bring my keys. Your mobile is off. Bloody hell, Petra.’
She clocked the voice: Eric. She noted the time. She had overslept and she still felt exhausted.
‘I can't get hold of Gina or Kitty,’ Eric was wailing with a certain theatricality, ‘and I've been waiting bloody ages.’
‘I'll be right in, I had a bad night. I'll be there in an hour. Sorry.’
Petra flung back the duvet and stood up quickly which compounded the fuggy nausea of having been awoken with a jolt. Physically holding her head, and with her eyes half shut, she shuffled to the bathroom to take a shower. It stung. Glancing down, she saw that her right knee was badly grazed. Carefully, she flannelled off the small sticky buds of blackened blood and bravely ran the shower cold over the freshly revealed abrasion. Scrubbing dirt from her fingernails, she observed a blade of grass whirl its way down the plughole. She gave a little shudder. She hated these hazy half-memories of the night before. She dried herself, dabbing gingerly at her knee, smoothing on Savlon and sticking a plaster lightly over the wound. Jeans felt too harsh so she pulled on a pair of old jogging bottoms, hurried into a sweatshirt and odd socks and shoved on the bashed-up trainers she favoured for work. But she had to clench her teeth and screw her eyes shut at a sudden scorch of soreness from her feet. Easing the shoes off, peeling her socks away, she inspected large blisters at each heel; one had burst and was red raw, the other bulged with fluid. If I cry now, Petra told herself, I won't make it into work at all. Bloody stupid sleepwalking – where was I going? What was I thinking?
She placed a pad of cotton wool on each heel, secured with Sellotape, slipped her feet into socks first stretched wide and then slid her feet into sandals. Sandals which she liked but which Rob referred to as ‘German lezzy abominations’.
‘If Rob could see me now,’ she muttered, giving her reflection a cursory glance before heading for the studio. ‘I hope he's OK.’
Eric felt a little sorry for Petra when he spied her at a distance limping along Hatton Garden. He waved at her and she tried to pick up her pace. He gestured the universal sign-language for ‘Coffee?’ to which she nodded and clutched
her heart so he nipped into the café outside which he'd been loitering and as Petra reached him, a comforting cappuccino was placed in her hands.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘and thanks.’
‘You OK?’ Eric asked, taking the studio keys from her as they walked in the direction of Leather Lane.
‘Yes, I overslept,’ Petra said.
‘You know, socks and sandals are generally unforgivable in all but children,’ Eric said with a superciliously raised eyebrow, ‘but mismatched white socks and spoddy sandals are a breach of the public peace. Gina will wince in pain and Kitty won't let you hear the end of it.’
‘Spoddy sandals?’ It made Petra smile. ‘Rob calls them my German Lesbian Things,’ she confided, frowning guiltily at her Birkenstocks.
‘I know a German lesbian or two,’ Eric qualified, ‘and let me tell you, I have never seen them wear socks with those. They are spoddy sandals. They're the summer equivalent of Nature Trek shoes. Without socks they are tolerable. But with socks they are indefensible.’
‘I have the most terrible blisters,’ Petra explained, as Eric unlocked the studio and they went about flicking on lights and hoicking up blinds.
‘Have you been hiking up mountains since yesterday evening then?’
‘You could say that,’ Petra said quietly. ‘I sleepwalked last night. Right out of the house. Almost a mile. In wellies.’
‘Dear God,’ Eric exclaimed. He took a long look at her. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
In the fifteen years he'd known her, since they were undergraduates in jewellery design at Central St Martins, he'd become familiar with her two very different morning faces. Her complexion soft and peachy after a good night's sleep or, as today, sallow and slightly haunted from the disturbance of somnambulism. When they had shared student digs, Eric had been the only one amongst the housemates not to laugh at her expense, never to tease her, always to believe it was entirely involuntary and an onerous affliction. What Petra doesn't know is that Eric used to wedge a chair outside her door and if it clattered he would wake and find her and gently guide her back to bed. He still brings in cuttings about the subject, buys Petra herbal preparations promising to rebalance the soul and promote uninterrupted sleep. He's tried to monitor when it happens most, or when the episodes are more extreme or when they happen least but so far his analysis has established no set pattern or reason.
‘Rob rescued me,’ Petra told him.
Eric pursed his lips to prevent himself from saying, Well, that's a contraction in terms.
‘Actually, the police found me,’ Petra clarified, ‘and they called Rob.’
‘The police,’ Eric sighed but more because he had a bit of a thing about men in uniform.
‘Police?’ Gina exclaimed, having arrived at the studio just at that moment.
‘Oh fuck, not the bastard police,’ scowled Kitty, right behind Gina but hearing even less of the conversation.
‘Stop picking up fag ends,’ Eric said.
‘But you are a fag,’ Kitty snorted.
‘And we did come in at the very end of what you were saying, darling,’ said Gina.
Gina carefully put her cashmere cardigan on a coat-hanger before placing it on one of the coat hooks, hanging her butter-soft nubuck leather Mulberry bag beside it. She slinked her slender frame into a pristine white lab coat and swept her hair away from her face with a wide velvet hairband. Kitty meanwhile took off her black crocheted shrug and slung it over the back of a chair, kicked off her thumping great black boots with the integrated steel shin guards and clumped down into the old pair of black trainers she kept at the studio. It was only when she tied back the drapes of her dyed black hair that her eyes became visible, meticulously delineated by bold swipes of black eyeliner, shaded in with eye shadow the colour of bruising and emphasized by thick slicks of jet black mascara.
Jewellers Kitty Mulroney and Georgina Fanshaw-Smythe shared the space with Eric and Petra and over the years the four of them had formed a thriving community, each referring to the others as their Studio Three. They shared the overheads, divvied tools and equipment, pitched in for a compact kitchenette, divided the chores and dished out praise for each other's work and support for each other's lives too. Their studio occupied a section of the third floor of an old building on a narrow street running between Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. Though it was not a big space, toes were never trodden upon. But the true success of their working environment was due to their extreme differences on personal and creative levels.
The variously pierced and tattooed Kitty, with her kohl-black make-up, dark pointy dress sense, and hair the colour and consistency of treacle, nevertheless made jewellery of painstaking delicacy and femininity; beautiful filigree pieces, two of which were on display at the Victoria and Albert museum. She sparred with Eric, trading insults and nicknames – though she had checked in advance if he'd mind her calling him ‘Gayboy’ and she was actually quite flattered when he retaliated with ‘Jezebel’. She also had a gentle fascination with Gina whose vowels were as polished as her beautifully bobbed fair hair, whose tools were in the same perfect condition as her weekly manicure, whose domestic set-up appeared to be as neat and classy as the ending of a Jane Austen novel. In turn, Gina had nothing but awe and respect for the impecunious Goth from New Cross. She marvelled at Kitty's sullen darkness, her apparent self-sufficiency when it came to love, her brazenness when it came to sex, her creative nonchalance when it came to money – not to mention her fascinating ways with black leather, black everything.
‘I'm two-a-penny in SW3,’ Gina had once said, ‘but you, Kitty, you are unique. Exotique.’
What was neither predictable nor dreary was Gina's work; large and chunky, fusing tribal design with modernist juts and twists.
‘One thing you are not is predictable or dull,’ Kitty protested. ‘You have daughters called Harry and Henry – how much more rock-and-roll can you get?’
‘But that's short for Harriet and Henrietta,’ Gina said.
‘But you call them Harry and Henry and when people see you loading them into your Sloane Range Rover, that's what they hear.’
Eric Bartley, far more girly than any of the women, felt it his duty to cluck over them like a mother hen. He brought in cakes and treats and new-fangled organic tonics and was the one who made the tea most often, earning him the moniker ‘Teas Maid’. If any of the women seemed below par, he'd give them a grave, sympathetic nod. He constantly sought their advice: from Clarins versus Clinique, to his frequent relationship dramas and what to cook that night; from his hair colour or his weight, to whether to buy Grazia or Men's Health. But when he was working on his strong, masculine, classic designs, he worked in utter silence, interspersing long periods of extreme concentration and productivity with bursts of manic chatter and scurrilous gossip.
Today, all eyes are on Petra. She may have washed the grass from her hair and restored its long, glossy mahogany curls, her fingernails may now be clean and jogging pants hide the plaster on her knee, however it is not the odd white socks and Birkenstocks which betray her in an instant, it's her demeanour. Everyone is used to Petra being the quieter member of their tribe, but today she is exceptionally wan. It casts a pallid mantle over her already delicate features; darkened hollows compromising the rich hazelnut of her usually bright eyes. She's slim, but today she looks brittle. Though her clothing rarely courts much attention, today she looks a mess.
‘Are you all right, Petra darling?’ Gina asks.
‘Because you don't look it. You look crap,’ says Kitty, ‘if you don't mind me saying.’
‘I had a bad night,’ Petra tells them. ‘I'm fine now. Just a bit tired.’
‘Rob?’ Gina mouths to Eric who shakes his head.
‘Not Rob,’ Petra hurries. ‘Rob came to my rescue. I just went walkabout whilst I was asleep. You know me.’
‘Right out of the house,’ Eric whispers to the other two. ‘She was walking to Whetstone.’
‘I don't e
ven know where Whetstone is,’ Gina says, as if it was possibly as far flung as the Arctic. ‘I thought you just tottered off to rearrange things in the kitchen, or bumped into the odd wall or door.’
‘I do, usually,’ Petra says.
‘Do you have any history there?’ Kitty asks darkly. ‘In Whetstone? A past life? Or ancestors? Bad blood?’
Petra smiles and shakes her head.
‘Then maybe you weren't so much walking, as being led?’ Kitty suggests in a hush.
‘I just walk,’ Petra shrugs. ‘I don't know where I was going, or why, because I can't remember. But the police found me and Rob came for me.’
‘Did you hurt yourself?’
‘Bashed, bruised and blistered,’ Eric interjects, ‘the poor lamb. Look at her footwear – that's necessity, not fashion.’
‘I'm fine, I'm fine,’ Petra says, suddenly tiring of the attention. ‘I'm just knackered. And pissed off with myself because I haven't actually left a building in my sleep for a good few months.’
‘Not since the fire-escape incident?’ Eric asks, with a sly wink.
‘God,’ Petra says, covering her face in horror.
‘You escaped from fire?’ Gina asks ingenuously.
‘You were in Bermuda, Gina,’ Kitty growls. ‘Petra was staying at a hotel in the country for her friends' wedding.’
‘And woke up freezing cold and stark naked on the fire escape,’ Eric adds.
‘And the only way back in was through the main entrance,’ Kitty says.
‘And of course she didn't think to take her room key,’ says Eric.
Gina is flabbergasted. ‘What were you wearing to Whetstone last night?’ she hardly dares ask.
‘Gumboots and an oversized Snoopy T-shirt,’ Petra mumbles from behind her hands.
‘Well, that's better than nothing,’ Gina says kindly though the look from Kitty says that she begs to differ.
