Sara lay motionless, her eyes gritty with exhaustion. Her mind was too busy now for sleep.
16
“You know that crack on the landing?” Neil said, putting down a tray of tea beside the bed.
“What about it?” said Sara, bleary-eyed.
“How long d’you reckon it’s been there?”
“I dunno,” she replied, “isn’t it just old houses? Carol’s got one in her sitting room. Something to do with the joists.”
Neil started muttering about movement and underpinning, but Sara tuned out.
Now that he had woken her, she wanted to talk about Cuckoo. Did he really think, having slept on it, that it was a masterpiece, as he had told Lou in the taxi home? He seemed unwilling to be called to account for his hyperbole of the previous evening, just muttering something about its being an impressive debut. Sara frowned.
“Did you feel sad, when she died? Because I didn’t,” she said, eyeing Neil over the rim of her teacup.
“Did I feel sad?” Neil pursed his lips and stared into space for what seemed to Sara to be several minutes.
“Well, if you have to think that hard about it, I don’t think you can have done.”
“I don’t know if that was really the point. There was a sense of inevitability about it.”
This felt like a cop-out to Sara.
“What about the humour?”
“What humour?”
“Lou said it was meant to be funny. Bits of it, anyway, but I didn’t see you laughing.”
“I was laughing.”
“No you weren’t.”
“I was laughing inside.”
Sara sipped her tea in silence.
In retrospect, it would have been better to stick with plan A and meet in the coffee shop. From the moment Sara stepped over the threshold of Lou and Gavin’s place the next morning, carrying a bulging folder of educational material under one arm, she knew it had been a mistake.
“Goodness! What’s all that?” said Lou.
“Oh, just some stuff off the Internet,” said Sara. “I probably got a bit carried away, but I thought, as long as I had the printer on.”
Sara dumped the file on the kitchen table and Lou took out a sheet at random.
“Make your own Montessori spindle boxes,” she read.
“Oh yeah, they’re for maths. You can buy the boxes from WHSmith and for the rods you just use…” she trailed off, seeing Lou’s face.“We don’t have to do it. It’s just, you know, back up, really, I went a bit,” she flapped imaginary wings, “crazy magpie.”
Ezra walked into the kitchen, wearing jockey shorts, his face scrunched around a cigarette. Sara stopped flapping and watched him pad over to the sink, fill the kettle and grind out his fag-end in the compost container. With his hairy, barrel-chest and strutting gait, he looked like a dog that had learned to walk on its hind legs.
“Hi Ezra,” she said.
“Yeah, hi.”
“Ezra’s a bit the worse for wear, aren’t you poppet?” said Lou. “Somebody thought it was a good idea to break out the single malt when we got back last night.”
“Oh well, don’t worry,” said Sara, “we’ll be out of your hair in a minute. We’re off to Rumbles for a coffee.”
“Not that place by the subway?” growled Ezra. “Shit they serve in that place they shouldn’t be allowed to call coffee – barfee maybe. I can make you a coffee’ll taste way better than that right here,” Ezra insisted.
“That’s sweet of you, Ez,” said Lou, “there you go, Sar. We can do the show right here.”
Sara was doubtful. She had left the boys at home, despite Neil having a paper to write for a child poverty conference, on the basis that she would be attending to the even more urgent business of their children’s education. Did Lou really expect to have a meaningful discussion, with her kids bouncing off the walls upstairs?
“I suppose we could try,” she said, wincing as a particularly powerful thud dislodged a flurry of plaster dust from the ceiling.
Moments later they were all three installed around the kitchen table and Sara was trying not to grimace at every sip of Ezra’s viscous brew. He and Lou were gossiping about an American artist she had never heard of.
“So, anyway,” she said, a little desperately, when there was a brief lull in their conversation, “I’ve had a really good rummage online, and I think I’ve got a sort of skeleton curriculum together.” She turned to Ezra.
“I don’t know if Lou mentioned? She and I are going to teach our kids at home for the next little while.”
She was rather proud of that “next little while”.
“Why the fuck would you want to do that?”
“Because,” said Sara, drawing herself up in her chair, “the education they’re getting at school leaves rather a lot to be desired. The teachers spend their whole time cramming, and real education – proper, child-centred learning just goes out the window.”
Ezra stared at her and she wondered whether he had read her manuscript yet, or if he even knew who she was. She glanced at Lou, for moral support, but her friend had started leafing through Sara’s resources file and didn’t seem to be listening.
“So this,” Ezra jerked his head upward to indicate the racket coming from the first floor, “is going to be your reality, five days a week?”
“I suppose it is,” Sara laughed a tinkly laugh, “but the reason I’m here, now; and why I’ve downloaded all this…” she nodded towards the bulging file “… is so that we have some structure in place, so it won’t be like this. Or not all the time at any rate.”
“Uhuh?” said Ezra, lighting another cigarette.
“This is incredibly impressive, Sara.” Lou looked up from the file. “You must have been researching it for days.”
“Oh not really. There are some excellent home education blogs out there. Once you’ve weeded out the crackpots and religious maniacs, there are still loads of normal people like us, who just want to provide a nurturing, creative experience for their kids. And there’s a very collaborative ethos, so nobody minds if you copy their lesson plans or worksheets or whatever.”
“Mmmm,” said Lou.
“But that’s all practical stuff. What’s fascinating to me is the educational theory, which I have to admit, I knew very little about.”
Lou looked bored.
“Anyway, it’s all in there. Peruse at your leisure.”
“Thanks,” said Lou. “What do you reckon, Ezra, want to join the faculty?”
Ezra gave her his dead-eyed stare.
“You could do a writing workshop with them,” Lou cajoled. “A lot of people find working with kids very stimulating. It feeds back into their own creativity.”
“It does?”
“Definitely,” nodded Lou. “I’ve got a couple of really good people signed up already.”
“Who?” said Sara, in surprise. She didn’t know whether to be miffed that she hadn’t been consulted, or gratified that Lou had shown some initiative.
“Well,” said Lou, “remember Ismael, who played guitar at our party? He’s happy to trade some guitar lessons for a bit of help with his English.”
“Fantastic!”
“And then I have this friend Beth who’s a puppeteer.”
“Not Beth Hennessy, from Little Creatures?” breathed Sara. Carol had crowed for weeks about the front row seats she had scored for their production of Stig of the Dump. In fact, it was a shame that they were no longer on name-dropping terms. She glanced at the fat grey file on the table, its ring binder straining to contain the wodge of worthy educational material she had so diligently collected. Ezra plucked a shred of tobacco off the end of his tongue, grinned and slowly shook his head.
“You got to be out of your minds,” he said.
“What do you mean?” said Sara.
“You ask me, you got someone whose job it is to keep your kids out of your hair eight hours a day, you got to be crazy to turn your back on that.”
“Ezra!” said Lou. “You’re such a tease.”
“I mean it.”
“Well, you would think that,” said Sara, “you haven’t got kids. But surely you’d agree that a child-centred model is best, rather than just teaching by rote, to the lowest common denominator?”
Ezra shrugged.
“You can’t legislate that stuff,” he said, “kid wants to write, he’ll write; kid wants to paint, he’ll paint. You think Herman Melville did workshops? You think Picasso did?”
“So you reckon writers are born, not made?” said Sara, thoughtfully.
The great man shrugged.
“Don’t ask me,” he replied, “all I know is, you try and make your kid into a writer or an artist, he’s gonna be a plumber or a janitor to spite you.”
“Ha!” said Sara, cheerfully. “Like Gavin in reverse.”
“How so?’ Ezra looked suddenly interested.
“Oh, er…” Sara darted an uneasy glance at Lou. “Didn’t he say that his mum wanted him to learn a trade? And his family don’t really get his art because they’re…”
A look of displeasure crossed Lou’s face, but her phone was flashing up an incoming call.
“Sorry, I need to take this.” She snatched it up and, throwing Sara an exasperated glance, she hurried from the room.
Ezra smiled inscrutably and flipped his lighter back and forth on the table.
There was a long silence.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to read my novel?” Sara at last plucked up the courage to ask.
“When did it come out?”
“Oh, it’s not actually published yet. Manuscript, I should have said. Lou was going to ask you to have a look at it.”
“I guess she must be saving it up.”
“Mmm.”
“What’s it about?”
“About?” Sara was nonplussed. “Oh, gosh. It’s a kind of rites-of-passage thing about this girl coming of age – she’s got a pretty unhealthy relationship with her father and she meets a boy from the wrong side of the tracks and they have a thing and the father gets pissed off and it all gets pretty intense and then…”
Ezra’s gaze had drifted over to the newspaper that lay on the corner of the table.
“Anyway, it’s quite short, so if you did have time to give me some pointers…”
“Sure.”
“Thank you. I loved your book, by the way.”
He smiled tolerantly.
“Mine’s nothing like so ambitious in scope. I love how you made the family stand for the nation.” She had read this in a review.
“I did?”
“Oh well, that’s what… Far be it from me, obviously. I just found it incredibly moving and surprising and tender.”
“Thank you,” said Ezra gravely. Sara was spared any further awkwardness by Lou’s return. The excitement of the call had clearly supplanted any irritation she had been feeling at Sara’s earlier indiscretion.
“Sorry about that, guys,” she said, glowing with pleasure and excitement. “That was Cory Hamer from Niche. She’s only got me on the judging panel for the Ann Arbor film festival.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Sara stood up and embraced her friend clumsily. “Will you do that from home?”
“God, no! You have to go.” Lou gave Ezra a disbelieving glance. “You can’t judge the Ann Arbor film festival long distance.”
“Well… when is it?” asked Sara stiffly.
“March the eighth to the twenty— oh crap!” Lou’s face fell.
“Lou, we’ve already postponed it twice.”
“I know, I know. But listen…” Lou was dancing an eager girlish jig. “I will completely take them off your hands until I go, so you can get on with your…” she waved her hand vaguely, “stuff… and then, if you can just hold the fort until I’m back…” she flicked her finger excitedly up and down the screen of her phone, “… yes, those dates work brilliantly – I have the best idea for a field trip.”
17
Spring had come to the West Country and the leaves on the birch trees shimmered like the streamers on a cheerleader’s pompom. As the Volvo squeezed down winding lanes, between hedgerows feet thick, Sara sensed the proximity of buds unfurling, roots thrusting, catkins flinging pollen onto the breeze. She felt her pulse quicken and her heart lift.
“Weather doesn’t look too clever,” Neil said, peering under the sun visor at the pregnant clouds.
“We’re not climbing the north face of the Eiger,” Sara pointed out.
“Still won’t be much fun if it pisses down.”
“We’ve got Carol’s tent, Neil,” she said. “It’s probably more watertight than our house.”
Borrowing the tent had been awkward. Sara would have preferred to buy one, but the festival tickets had been pricey and the savings account was running low. It hadn’t made it any easier that Carol was so nice about it.
“Don’t worry,” she’d said, when Sara had made some pathetic excuse for not seeing much of her lately, “We’re all busy people. I’m having a Nespresso, do you want one?” She’d indulged Sara with fifteen minutes of friendly chitchat, then barely batted an eyelid when Sara brought the conversation round, none too subtly, to the subject of camping.
“A festival?” she’d said, with only the faintest whiff of condescension. “Oh well, whatever floats your boat,” but she had volunteered the tent, as well as all its state of the art accoutrements, without having to be asked. Sara had forgotten that, beneath the preciousness and point scoring, Carol was actually a decent human being.
Neil’s Eeyore-ish gloom about the weather wasn’t fooling anyone. If anything, he was more excited than Sara about their weekend away. Amazing what the right line-up would do to a man’s spirits – in this case, a predictable blend of acoustic hipster whimsy, grizzled old bluesmen and the odd superannuated punk. For her, the event held other attractions; forty-eight hours of unmediated access to Gavin and Lou, not least among them. Their company was usually parceled out so frugally – an evening here, an afternoon there, and always the sense of other people, other priorities, waiting to claim them. This weekend would be all theirs.
“Can we catch our own dinner, Mum? Like on Man versus Wild?” Patrick piped up, from the back seat. Sara felt a pang of guilt. She had perhaps overstated the self-sufficiency angle.
“I don’t know about catch,” she replied, “but cook, definitely. I’ve brought some sausages.”
“Sausages are boring. Can’t we catch a rabbit and skin it?”
“Like you could kill a rabbit,” said Caleb, “you cried when the guinea pig died.”
A scuffle broke out in the back of the car.
“Nobody’s going to be killing anything,” said Neil.
“Although there is archery,” said Sara, sunnily, “look,” she passed a leaflet over her shoulder.
“Lush, two thous-and and four-teen,” Patrick read haltingly, “Medlar’s Farm, Devon, feat-ur-ing Crawdaddy, The Jeremiahs, They Might be Giants. This is boring.”
“Carry on,” Sara urged, “you’re doing very well. See where it says Kids Lush?’”
“… Story-telling,” he went on, “tug-o-war – what the…? Circus skills, song-writing workshops.”
“There you go, Caleb,” Sara turned round and gave him her encouraging face. “Didn’t you and Dash want to start a band?”
Caleb stared moodily out of the window.
A splotch of rain landed on the windscreen and Neil turned on the wipers. For a few moments, everybody watched them stutter pointlessly back and forth, before he switched them off again.
“He-e-ey,” he said, after a while, glancing in the rear view mirror, “what were the chances?”
Sara swivelled round in her seat.
“No way!” She said. The Humber was directly behind them. Lou’s bare feet were up on the dashboard, Gav was wearing a preposterous Stetson. They looked more relaxed than anyone who had left London, via the M4, during the rush hour had a right
to.
“How did they manage that?” she said.
By now, Patrick had shucked off his seat belt and was rearward-facing, gurning and flicking Vs through the back window. Lou was laughing and flicking them back.
“Must have made good time,” said Neil. “Mind you, it’s got some poke, that car,” and as if to prove him right, Gavin swung out, as the road widened, and roared alongside, so that the two vehicles were briefly and hair-raisingly level. Lou wound down the passenger window and shouted something that Sara couldn’t quite catch, then Gavin put his foot down, and with a volley of hoots and much waving, they accelerated away.
“Catch up with them, Dad,” begged Patrick, bouncing up and down eagerly.
“Yeah, overtake them,” said Caleb, indignation getting the better of him.
For a mad moment, Sara also found herself wishing that Neil would unleash some horsepower and show Gavin what he was made of, but Neil maintained a steady thirty, pointing out that country lanes weren’t designed for drag racing and he, at least, would like to arrive in one piece.
For a small-scale event, Lush had created chaos on the roads. They turned off the A35, leaving behind the Mercs and Audis towing their speedboats to the Cornish Riviera, and joined a slow-moving queue of festival-goers in VW camper vans, clapped out Morris Minors, Citroens, and Saabs, the vehicles’ dilapidation as proudly worn as their rainbow mandalas and consciousness-raising window stickers.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” said Neil, grinning, as a dreadlocked man in a hi-vis jacket and lobe-stretchers fastened neon bands around their wrists and waved Neil cheerfully towards a parking space. “I don’t know why we haven’t done this before.”
They unloaded the car and joined a steady flow of new arrivals dressed in split-knee jeans, flip-flops and beanies or bush hats. As they humped their cooler boxes and IKEA hold-alls onto the main site, this new contingent mingled with the old-timers who, having arrived a full twenty-four hours earlier, had already cast off the shackles of conformity and were traipsing from stage to portaloo to falafel stand to healing tent, in tutus and Doc Marten boots, onesies and Smurf outfits. Now and then, a sound-check from the main stage would send an ear-splitting whine of feedback echoing across the valley.
The People at Number 9 Page 14
