The Square (10 page)

Today, it’s even more theatrical than ever.

“I dare you,” says Jay, amused, on the phone before they meet.

“What?”

“I dare you… to turn up this afternoon with nothing on.”

She pauses, inhales sharply, tosses the specially blunt cut fringe.

“Don’t be completely mad. Are you mad?”

“Not at all. I’d like it. Under your coat. Nothing. You must be in the nudy-rudy.”

She laughs.

“Are you joking? What if I meet someone on the way, someone I know? A parent from George’s school? With one of George’s friends? You know it is Inset Day.”

He says nothing.

She blushes. She is embarrassed by her prudery, about whether Jay won’t like it. She wonders if she is seeming middle-aged, not fun any more. Maybe she
should
go and meet her lover naked but for a coat. She then thinks of Harriet, Jay’s wife. She is sure that Harriet would never do this, that is for certain. She envisages Harriet’s curves without underwear, lumbering unsupported into a coat. That makes her mind up. She’ll do it, if only because she knows Harriet would never.

“Would it excite you? Would you really like it?”

He says nothing. There is a small rustle at his end of the phone. It’s a joke, of course. But she senses he would clearly like her to do it.

“Alright, I will.”

She hears him breathing.

“Will you? Really?”

“Yes, but I’ll have to dive into a shop if I spot someone I know. So I might be late.”

She is sitting at her kitchen table. As she talks, her eye falls on the pinboard hanging on the wall. It is full of small pieces of paper headed with a crest and a Latin phrase. These are from George’s prep school. They speak of term dates and sporting fixtures. George’s imminent future is mapped out on the pinboard, beside a menu from the local Thai. There’s a list of opening times for the local pool, over a very old photograph of her and Patrick standing in the Grand Canyon. Ooh-ah Point, it’s called. Because that is the noise that people make when they are standing on it. Ooh-Aaah. She and Patrick are arm in arm, grinning.

She turns away from the pinboard. Jay is still talking.

“… and so I’ll see you at two, yes?”

“Sure. But Jay?”

“What, sugar?”

She smiles at him down the phone.

“I’ve got a great idea too. Why don’t you come with nothing on?”

Now it is Jay’s turn to be silent. Then, a cackle of laughter.

“Darling, really? Must I? Would you really find that a turn on? I’m not sure I do, you know.”

In Jay’s mind the idea of a penis vulnerably dangling under a coat is not quite the same as the idea of a naked female body hidden behind the folds of tweeds or wool of London Fog. It is not erotic. It is rather embarrassing. Or just funny.

Jane laughs out loud.

“You might get mistaken for a flasher!”

“Quite. Oh, God Jane. I don’t think so. I have to tell you, I’d feel a bit seedy, you know. Anyway, how on earth will I obscure the fact I have nothing on my legs? I’m in the office!”

“Go on. I dare you.”

“Bare legs on a woman are sexy. Bare legs on a man tend not to be.”

“Oh come on, Jay.”

“I must insist on trousers.”

“Very well. Trousers. But no underwear, and no shirt.”

“Socks?”

“No.”

He sighs.

“I’ll have to go out of the back entrance.”

He wishes he’d never brought up the whole fantasy. It has been a fantasy of his for quite some time, envisaging her dashing through town with nothing on but a coat. Because Jane has always been so perfectly groomed, certainly compared to his wife’s rather chaotic appearance, it excites him to wield the power of ungrooming over her.

“I look like a mess anyway. Nobody will notice I haven’t got socks on. But I may have to arrive by taxi.”

How much harder it is for men to disrobe in public, she thinks. Bare legs, bare arms, these things are quite commonplace for a woman. Going out at night, they are almost requisite. When they appear on a man outside of the realm of exercise, he could be marked down as a nutter.

And so, just as the afternoon has commenced in earnest and people are sitting down to business lunches across town or collecting their small children from morning nursery, Jay and Jane are crossing town to see one another. Partially naked.

He is coming from work. She is coming from her house, where a child is now alone.

He leaves the office in his coat and trousers. A pale cashmere scarf at his throat disguises the fact he is wearing no shirt. He feels rather lost without boxer shorts. Lost but weirdly liberated. He feels his genitals brush across his leg in a not wholly unpleasant manner.

He hails a cab, and with a sigh of relief, clambers in.

Jane is walking briskly down the road. Bare legs, simple sandals, a knee-length mac. She has nothing else on. Her buttocks are goosepimpled against the shiny lining of the mac. The lack of a bra makes her nipples stand out. A man walks past her. She smiles at him. She is getting turned on by this, despite herself. Jay was right; this is exciting.

As long as she doesn’t meet anyone she knows.

Oh, shit.

Here, walking down the road towards her, is someone she knows.

George’s piano teacher. Roberta. No, no. Of all people. Maybe she won’t see her.

Roberta sees Jane, smiles. Stops.

“Hello Jane,” says Roberta, who is full of inner joy because Tracey has rebooked a whole term’s worth of lessons with Belle. “How lovely to see you. I’m on my way to the Square, actually, to teach Belle. And I was just thinking about George.”

“Oh, Roberta, hello,” she manages to say, keeping her hands in her pockets, checking with a tiny downward movement of her head, that her coat is buttoned up. “How are you?”

Rather than continuing to walk, Roberta decides to stand still on the pavement.

“I’m very well. Looking forward to seeing George.”

“Roberta, I am so sorry. I am on my way to a meeting. And I’m a bit late. I’ve left George at home, actually. He’s on an Inset Day, and I can’t leave him for long.”

She makes to look at her watch, realises she doesn’t have one, puts her hand swiftly back in the pocket of her mac. She smiles hopefully at Roberta.

“Oh, not at all. Just wanted to say how well George is going at the moment.”

“Great, great. Well, see you on Friday, then?”

“Right-oh. Bye.”

As they part, Roberta looks at Jane’s departing back and wonders almost subconsciously why Jane, always so immaculate, is wearing sandals, with bare legs, on such a chilly afternoon. Then she walks on.

Jane, walking in the other direction, is travelling very quickly now. Her armpits are clammy, sticking to the unmoulding lining of the coat, without the forgiving intervention of cotton to soak up the sweat.

Oh for God’s sake, thinks Jane. This is madness. It’s not erotic, in the least. It’s stupid.

She arrives at the counter.

“I booked an, um, a day room,” she says to the receptionist.

In the foyer, Jay, reading the paper, looks up and smiles. Then he gets up, folds the paper, comes close and stands behind her.

“Hello darling.”

He presses his body to hers. She can feel his hard cock in the small of her back.

“Room No. 314,” says the receptionist.

“Thank you,” says Jane in what she hopes to be the professional way of a woman who is about to have a meeting.

In the lift he unbuttons her mac.

“This is so mad. I bumped into the fucking piano teacher,” she whispers into his ear.

“I don’t care,” he moans.

He leans towards her and kisses her breasts, fondles her naked arse.

“Oh my God Jane,” he murmurs as the lift doors open.

“You really are naked. You did that for me?” He buries his face in her neck.

They step out onto Floor 3.

Then, in the corridor, it’s easy. Because neither of them is wearing anything. He pulls her coat off her shoulders, surveys her standing there, totally naked, in sandals. Then, deliberately, he takes off his coat. Undoes his belt. Slips off his shoes. Pulls his trousers down, and off. There they are. Two respectable middle-aged professionals, whose conservative lives are of untrammelled comfort and pleasure, naked in the corridor of a Travelodge.

“I am going to fuck you in this corridor,” whispers Jay.

“What? What? Are you bloody out of your mind?” says Jane, trembling, laughing. She grabs his buttocks, which are slightly cool to the touch.

“What happens if a cleaner turns up?”

Jay shrugs.

“Let her.”

“Or him. Not all cleaners are female.”

“Open your legs you politically correct darling.”

She backs up against the wall, smiling nervously. Strands of her perfectly cut hair cling to the slightly raised wallpaper, galvanised by static.

He grabs both her thighs and heaves her body up the wall against the raised wallpaper so her feet leave the ground.

“Do you think anyone has ever done this in this particular corridor before?” he grunts.

She cannot speak. She is fucking her lover in the corridor of the Travelodge. She can’t think of anything else. Her brain is flooded by sexual excitment. She looks over his shoulder down the corridor, at all the demurely closed bedroom doors. What if one should open? She imagines she can hear a television, or some sort of music playing nearby. Someone is probably sitting on a bed, watching the racing. Or MTV. Maybe they are pottering around the room, turning up the air con, having a bite from one of the tasteless apples sitting in the display of the stainless steel bowl on top of the minibar. While two people about twenty feet away are indulging in sexual intercourse outside their door. Maybe this person is opening the minibar, and, discontented with the paltry array within, is considering going downstairs for a proper cup of coffee. She realises she would quite like to be discovered like this. Her back is rubbing up and down the wall. Feels like it’s been papered in Artex. How she is going to explain the scratches away to Patrick is a problem she will have to assess, later. She then remembers how rarely he sees her naked body.

Jay groans, and slowly lets her down. She pats his sweaty back. She feels liberated, joyous, momentarily a different person, someone careless and untrammelled by convention.

“Thank you,” she says, looking at him.

“Why?” he gasps. “For fucking you in a corridor?”

“For fucking me in a corridor. Makes me feel alive.”

He laughs, kisses her shoulder.

“Let’s go into our bedroom. Have you got the key?”

“Yes, but quickly. I only have about an hour left.”

Chapter Ten Jas

“Jas! Get up!”

Far away, he hears his mother’s insistent cry, rolls over on the bed, clasps at his duvet for one last sustaining moment of soft warmth, then wakes up properly, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and stands up.

“Jas! Don’t you have to be with Philip?” his mother calls.

“Yup!”

“Well you are going to be late!”

Yes, yes, he knows, he knows. He takes off his T-shirt, pulls on another, steps into a pair of boxers, walks over to his younger brother Javi. The boy is still sleeping, a beatific look of relaxation on his face.

Jas and Javi share a room so small you can almost touch both sides of the wall when standing in the middle of it. This has some advantages. Not going far to get dressed is one of them. Always having a bottle of Lynx at hand is another. Jas reaches, grabs the aerosol can, sprays it over Javi’s bed. It has a satisfactorily immediate effect.

“Arrgh! Fuck off! Jas! Mum! He sprayed me again! Mum!”

“Morning. Wasteman,” says the tormentor, grabbing his trousers and leaving the room, laughing.

Brushing his teeth, he considers his day, which is to be spent with his quondam employer on the Square. Philip.

Now there is a lucky bastard, muses Jas as he spits into the basin. How the hell does he get away with it? Not for the first time, Jas thinks about how jammy Philip really is. Walks around in a robe all morning. Has lots of money. Talks dirty, especially about women. Has porno pictures around the place. Dresses like a binman, or an electrician. Lives in a million pound house, or more. Gets people, people like Jas, to help him with his work.

And it’s not exactly work like mending cars, or brain surgery. It is making models of golf holes, which sell for shed loads. Or rather, not making them because he, Jas, does the lion’s share. And nobody tells Philip off for being rude and sexist because he is a famous artist. He sort of earns money for being eccentric. How do you manage to arrive at that, thinks Jas. How do you train for it? How, when you are starting out, or thinking about becoming an eccentric, do you know it’s going to work? Or maybe that’s the thing. Eccentric artists never contemplate the possibility of being normal, because they are not normal.

He finishes brushing his teeth, checks his hair, runs down the short flight of stairs to the living area where Brenda, his mother, is finishing her breakfast while watching a report on TV which is coming live from an award ceremony in Hollywood. A very excited reporter in a tuxedo is gushing over a never-ending array of American celebrities who are all looking very pleased with themselves and grinning over the giant golden objects they have just won.

“Look at that dress,” Brenda comments on one of them. “Bloody marvellous. How does she get into it, that’s what I want to know. Look at the size of them.”

Jas looks steadily at the screen, where a succession of tiny women with giant heads in shiny colourful gowns are grinning and waving on a vast red carpet which surrounds them like a painting.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says.

“Well, you are meant to be the creative one,” she whispers, reaching up to kiss him. The report finishes. The presenters of the breakfast show, who are sitting on a bright pink sofa turn to each other and congratulate themselves on how wonderful the world of American award ceremonies really is, and how happy they are to be discussing it on a bright pink sofa.

“Go on. Win your old mum an Oscar,” says Brenda, who is a care worker for the council with five people, all in wheelchairs, all living in separate areas of the borough, all of whom she is obliged to visit on a daily basis. Once she accounts for public transport and traffic, Brenda has no more than twenty-five minutes with each of them, in which time she must give them a hot meal and check they have taken their medicine. It’s a sprint. She sighs, puts on her coat.