The People at Number 9

by Felicity Everett

  The waiter came and Neil ordered dry martinis, with a decisiveness that surprised Sara.

  “Great place.” Neil examined the menu. “Bit pricey though.”

  “Who cares?” shrugged Sara. “It’s on them.”

  “You think we should let them pay? On her birthday?”

  “Oh, no,” said Sara sarcastically, “let’s buy her dinner as well as an expensive present. Oh, and let’s throw in a babysitter as well.”

  This was disingenuous, she knew. When Lou had called round in a flap, to tell Sara that her babysitting arrangements had fallen through, Sara’s mother had been quick to volunteer her services.

  “Bring them round here, by all means, Louise,” Audrey had insisted, only too pleased to make herself useful once again to the delightful family who had parachuted a Pulitzer prize-winner into her dining room, “the more the merrier.” But it was one thing to accept Sara’s mother’s kind offer, in Sara’s opinion, quite another to dump the kids an hour early in order to “swing by” a private view, en route to the restaurant.

  “Jesus. Who rattled your cage?” said Neil. “Your mum was well up for it.”

  “Yeah well, she doesn’t know Dash.”

  “You’ve got it in for that kid.”

  Sara stared at him stony-faced. Already they were off on the wrong foot.

  Neil took a deep breath.

  “Nice dress,” he said, “is it new?”

  “I didn’t buy it specially, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s okay if you did.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  A lie. She had gone into town to buy Lou’s present and got sidetracked. It was a Madmen-type number that showed off her shoulders and made her look as if she had tits; not the kind of thing she normally wore, but once she’d put it on, all she could think about was Gav taking it off her again and so she’d bought it. The guilt of the purchase had ensured that she spent double what she’d meant to on Lou’s present.

  Sara took a sip of her drink. It was delicious – clean and cold, like the slice of a scalpel. Belatedly, she remembered to clink glasses with Neil.

  “Shaken not stirred,” he said in his Sean Connery voice.

  “That was awful,” she said.

  Lou and Gav’s arrival seemed to cause a bit of a frisson in the restaurant, whether because the other diners recognised them, or because they entered like people who expected to be recognised, Sara wasn’t sure. Lou certainly wasn’t courting anonymity, in her leather skirt and tight Nirvana tee shirt. Seeing her, Sara had the usual pang of doubt about her own outfit, until she noticed Gav’s eyes flicker greedily over her cleavage and felt instantly better.

  When the hugs and happy birthdays were done with, they sat down and Neil nodded to the waiter to bring two more martinis.

  “Sorry we’re late, by the way,” Gav said. “Had to show our faces in Shoreditch. Private view of a mate of mine.”

  “Any good?” asked Neil.

  “Naaah.”

  They all laughed. There was a pause while they settled into one another’s company and rode out the inhibiting curiosity of their fellow diners.

  “Mmmm, these are lethal!” said Lou, sipping her martini happily. Gav swivelled round in his seat, caught the waiter’s eye and ordered another round just by spiralling his finger. The first drink had already made Sara a little woozy, but Gav’s proximity prompted her to take a large gulp of the second one to calm her nerves. He always looked well-turned out, but tonight he had refined his left-field aesthetic to perfection. He was wearing a dark denim shirt under a jacket, which though knitted, somehow managed to look better-tailored than Neil’s Jaeger twill. His eyes glittered like jet in the candlelight and his cheekbones looked sharp enough to shave parmesan. All the same, there was a vulnerability about him – something different that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Then it came to her. He had shaved off his beard. She remembered how mean she had been about it, and felt guilty and exhilarated at once. The dolt, the adorable fool. There had been no need, she wanted to tell him; she loved him either way.

  Neil gave her a nudge and, remembering herself, she reached into her bag for Lou’s present and card.

  “For me?” Lou’s eyes boggled with gratitude as if a present on her birthday surpassed her wildest expectations. She opened the card and made a little moue of gratitude, then ripped into the package. She had, Sara thought, never looked more beautiful or more damaged. Even with her hair scraped back in a scruffy topknot, barefaced, save for a slick of eyeliner, she still managed to make Sara, with her well-buffed glow and her expensive dress, feel obvious and suburban.

  “It’s nothing much,” Sara lied. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like it, but they’re happy to exchange. There were two or three nice ones but I just thought this one seemed the…”

  Lou laid a hand on Sara’s and she trailed off foolishly. “I love it,” she said, “it’s beautiful.”

  She put the bangle and its tissue wrapping to one side and turned her attention to the menu. “Now, what do I want to eat? Do I want confit of duck? Or do I want black rice with monkfish? Oh God, I can’t choose.” She snapped it shut. “Neil, order for us will you?”

  Neil looked up in alarm, as if the teacher had asked him to take the class, but soon rose to the occasion with a high-handedness that Sara feared exceeded his brief. Before long they were feasting as if it were the last days of the Roman Empire, dishes arriving thick and fast from the kitchen, each one containing an obscure animal part or salad leaf of which Sara had never heard. Not to be outdone, Gav ordered a bottle of wine costing eighty pounds, which they downed in half an hour, and followed with a second.

  It was a pity, Sara thought vaguely, not to be paying more attention to the delicately rendered juices, the subtle dressings, the witty garnishes. Who knew when she would eat so well again? But the food might as well have been sawdust. How could she taste, when there was so much looking to be done? She had endured weeks with barely a glimpse of Gav, and now here he was, just inches away from her, smiling his crooked smile, waggling his fork to make a point. Sara struggled to tune in to what he was saying – something about a guy he’d met at the private view, a short beefy bloke called Matt, with an impressive moustache and a slightly incongruous alto voice.

  “I knew I knew him from somewhere,” Gav said, “I just couldn’t work out where. And then the penny dropped – it was Matilda. This girl I’d known at art school. She’d transgendered. It was a shock, you know, but also great. He was so together – so much more himself than she’d ever been.”

  Sara dangled her wineglass halfway between lips and table, smiling, shaking her head.

  “And I was like, ‘mate, great to see you, welcome to the fold,’” Gav went on, “only, for fook’s sake, can you not stand next to me with that six pack ’cause you’re making me look like a wuss!”

  Everyone laughed, but then Neil embarked on a lecture about hetero-normative assumptions, which slightly killed the mood and Gavin, though nodding and smiling, started delving in his pocket for his rolling tobacco. Here, Sara thought, was her chance. Before Gav could declare his intentions, she got in first, announcing that she needed to pee. She skipped off the bench, leaving Gav for dead, and made straight for the Ladies, where she checked her appearance in the mirror, and pushed the button on the hand dryer, for authenticity’s sake, before taking a sneaky detour via the courtyard, where she knew, by now, Gav would be ensconced.

  “I’ll have one of those,” she said.

  He was sitting on the steps, partly obscured by a topiaried bay tree.

  “Please,” he said sternly.

  “Pretty please.”

  He surrendered his freshly rolled cigarette and began making another one. When it was finished, he sparked his lighter and they both leaned in. Seeing his face in the glow, his hooded eyes, his thin, sardonic mouth, she felt a mule-kick of lust.

  “Mmmm,” she said, inhaling, lest he be in any doubt that she was enjoying herself. />
  “Careful now,” he said. “Don’t make yourself poorly.”

  “I can honestly say I have never felt better.”

  She had had just enough alcohol to remove her inhibition, not so much that she didn’t know, with forensic clarity, what she was doing. She cupped his newly shorn chin in her hand.

  “You didn’t need to shave it off, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’m flattered you did.”

  She dropped the barely-smoked cigarette and taking his hands, pulled him up to a standing position. She could smell the wool of his jacket, the astringent scent of his cologne and beneath them both, his own slightly musty aroma, a scent she had come to prefer to any on earth. She knew they couldn’t fuck, not here; but a kiss would suffice. A kiss, on Lou’s birthday, would be fine. She tugged his head towards her, turned her face upwards and closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, his breath sweetish and acrid from the wine and tobacco.

  “Don’t be.” She jostled his mouth with hers, but he caught her jaw in his hand.

  “No,” he said, gently, “I’m sorry.”

  25

  As if in a trance, she walked to the water’s edge and felt the sand suck her feet down a little further with each step, as she drew nearer to the rush and bubble of the approaching waves. She picked up a piece of bladderwrack from the shore and weighed its heft in her hands. It was slimy and its air-filled pods felt more substantial than her life. She hung it over her face, like a veil. It felt right, to be thus obscured, by watery, putrid stuff, by primitive plant life. She had come from water and she would return to it. Her feet sank inexorably into the sand and the tide swirled around them. By the time they came looking for her the next morning…

  “Sara?”

  “Jesus!” Sara swung round in her chair.

  “What are you doing?”

  Neil’s eyes looked baggy with tiredness. He was only wearing pyjama bottoms and Sara’s eyes were drawn to the whorls of springy hair around his nipples.

  “I’m writing,” she replied.

  “At two in the morning?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Well, I’m not stopping you.”

  “Just come to bed.”

  “And when will I get to write?”

  “At the weekend.”

  “You’ll take the boys out, will you?”

  “Ah, I could, only…”

  Sara shrugged and turned back to the screen, irritated, yet somehow also gratified by him continuing to hover guiltily behind her. She heard him sigh, and push the door to. He went over to the ugly wingbacked armchair they had inherited from her mother and perched watchfully on its inhospitable edge. Sara continued to stare pointedly at her computer screen.

  “So this is what, a re-write?” he ventured at last, “only, shouldn’t you wait until you get some professional feedback?”

  She looked at him witheringly.

  “I’ve had all the ‘professional feedback’ I need, thanks. This is something new.”

  “Well I don’t think, just ’cause you’ve had a few rejections, you should write it off.”

  “With respect,” she said, swivelling the chair towards him, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Lou does,” he said.

  “What?” Sara said, rudely.

  “Lou read your book and loved it. Presumably, her opinion counts for something?”

  “She said she loved it.”

  “Why would she say it if she didn’t mean it?”

  “God, you can be naïve sometimes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How about, so we’d lend her eight grand to make her film? I don’t think we’ll be seeing that again anytime soon, do you?”

  Neil gawped at her and she was reminded, fleetingly, of his essential goodness – the quality that had first drawn her to him. She had loved that he saw only the best in people, that he believed in progress and regarded sin from a sociological, rather than a moral standpoint; even as she despaired at his credulousness, his unfashionable stalwart sunniness, his conspicuous lack of existential gloom. Perhaps the times had changed, certainly the company had – at any rate Neil’s naïve optimism about human nature now struck her as silly. Silly, and deeply unsexy.

  “You think Lou’s that calculating?” he said.

  “Maybe not consciously, but I think that’s the game she’s playing. The game they’re both playing. They’ve been cultivating us.”

  “Christ! When did you get so cynical?”

  “Maybe the eighth or ninth time Lou dumped the kids on me while she rang her agent, or filled out a grant application or, let me see, storyboarded an entire short film while I stopped her kids from killing each other.”

  “I thought you said she was an inspirational teacher.”

  “She was. For about two minutes. Until she got bored.”

  Neil looked crestfallen and Sara softened a little.

  “Honestly? If I’d known it was going to be like this, I never would have taken the kids out of school. I don’t even care that I’ve fucked my life over, but I can’t bear the thought that we’ve done it to them. At least they were happy at Cranmer Road. God, I’ll never slag off teachers again. I never realised how much energy it takes, how much ingenuity. You have to stay one step ahead all the time. You have to make boring stuff interesting. You have to really get stuck in. I must have been mad to think I could do that and write as well.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. Something like this – it’s bound to have ups and downs. You’ve done a really, really courageous thing – to try and lead a creative life. To role-model that to the kids and make space for them to be creative in their turn. That’s a huge thing. If you can pull that off, that’s going to be way more of an achievement than anything I’ve ever done. But it was never going to be easy. Something like that – it’s not a straight line.”

  “But that’s just it,” she said, “those two things – leading a creative life yourself and providing that environment for the kids,” she shook her head, “mutually exclusive. You can’t have your cake and eat it. Finally, I get where Ezra was coming from. Creativity is selfish. At least the kind that results in art. How can I carve out the time I need for myself, as well as help the kids realise their potential? I can’t.”

  “That is so pessimistic. You’re buying into a stupid romanticised view of what creativity’s about – starving in garrets, cutting your ear off – the whole tortured genius myth.”

  “Oh, what do you know about it?” she said angrily. “The most creative thing you’ve ever had to do is choose the font for the annual report.”

  Neil looked hurt, but rather than recant, she went on, her strident whisper becoming hoarser and hoarser as she pressed home her point.

  “It might be a mystery to you, Neil, but I can tell you, from first hand experience, that art comes at a cost. Writing isn’t something you can tinker with on the sidelines. It’s a serious commitment, or it’s nothing. Why do you think I’m up in the middle of the night? It’s not because my creative juices flow better at two in the morning, I can tell you. It’s because it’s the only time I can bloody well carve out. Is it any wonder my writing’s shit? Is it any wonder I’ve got an inbox full of rejections? I’m an amateur, Neil, and I write like one. To be a proper artist, you’ve got to make sacrifices. You’ve got to be prepared for your work to eat you alive – and for it to eat everyone around you alive.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, don’t be so melodramatic. What about Lou and Gavin? They’re both artists, but they don’t make a meal of it…”

  Sara flung herself backwards in her chair, in a spasm of disbelief.

  “You have got to be kidding!” she squeaked.

  “Well, it seems to me they get it about right,” said Neil, defensively, “they have their work; they have their family…”

  “Neil, I have the
ir family! You do know I’m childminding Zuley at the moment?”

  Neil looked taken aback. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Lou’s fallen out with Mandy. She thinks she’s got her claws into Gavin. So now I’m running a fucking crèche. On the itinerary next week – a day trip to Tower Bridge to learn about levers. Can you imagine? With Zuley in tow?”

  “But Lou’ll go too, surely?” said Neil.

  “Oh, she says she will,” said Sara, “she probably even thinks she will, but come Monday morning you can bet there’ll be some catastrophe that only she can sort out. She’ll have to go and camp out at the passport office, or she’ll get asked to do some urgent script edits or something. Christ knows what, but I’m willing to bet the house that she won’t be within a million fucking miles of Tower Bridge. That’s how it works for Lou and Gavin.”

  “Well, no, that’s not on,” said Neil, his indignation a little underpowered to Sara’s way of thinking, “you’ll just have to tell her.”

  “I’ll have to?”

  “We will. We’ll bring it up tomorrow night.”

  Overwhelmed by Neil’s generosity in footing the bill at Lupercal, and somewhat the worse for drink, Lou had insisted on inviting them round for dinner. “Lou’s birthday round two,” she had modestly called it.

  At the time, Sara had smiled tersely, determined that wild horses would never again drag her over Lou and Gavin’s threshold for the purposes of socialising, but it was starting to dawn on her that such an assignation might, after all, have its uses.

  26

  Sara slid down the bath into the scalding water and watched her body turn a startling sherbet pink. Only her knees, protruding above the Plimsoll line of pain, remained flesh-coloured. Beads of sweat bloomed in her hairline and trickled down her face, but she stayed put. It was a test of will.

  Later, she sat naked, on the edge of the bed, massaging body lotion into her legs and rehearsing the evening ahead. On reflection, she decided, she’d be mad to leave things to Neil. A couple of glasses of wine, and they’d have him eating out of their hands. It made her cringe, the way he crept around them lately – laughing at Gav’s lame jokes, indulging Lou’s selective memory syndrome. He didn’t seem to realise what a bad look it was – they could scarcely be blamed for booting his backside if he was determined to stick a target on it and bend over. But she was damned if she was going to take a kicking. She’d had enough.