The Square (21 page)

“Oh my God!” giggles Harriet. “Everyone seems to be paying everyone else around here to do things for them. I wish I had the money to pay a cleaner, frankly. Really wish that with all my heart. Jay won’t hear of it. So, do tell. What does Queen Jane think of that, then?”

“She hates it!”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“How do you know?” asks Harriet.

“She told me so herself!” says Tracey. “Well, not in so many words, but she came across the street the other day and said ‘do you know your au pair is playing our piano on a regular basis, and do you mind? Because after all you are paying her to work for you, aren’t you?’ Like it would get Anya into trouble.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that Anya was free to do what she wanted between eleven and four. Anyone who has ever had an au pair, and let’s face it, Jane has had about a thousand, knows that.”

There is a pause. Something has just occurred to Harriet.

“Do you think Patrick fancies her?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Dear old Patrick.”

The women sit together in a silent reverie thinking about Patrick, and what he must face, living with someone like Jane.

Tracey stands up. “Right, I must go. Thanks for the keys. Sorry to bother you.”

“Not at all. Sorry about, you know, asking you about Alan. But, talking of Alan, which we weren’t just then, but anyway. Do you think he really will present the Talent Show?”

“Who, Alan? Yes, of course he will. As I said, he loves the Square. Always going on about it.”

It was true. Every time Alan Makin came into its charmed space, he felt cosseted and caressed by it. Every time he went home to his immaculate flat which was, he had to admit, in a spectacular, Grade One listed building, but on a main road in Highgate, he felt brutalised. He would even talk to the Munchkin about it.

“Would you like to live in the Square?” he asks the reptile.

The Munchkin looks back with a basilisk stare.

“I’ll take that as a Yes,” says Alan, dropping crickets into the vitrine.

Chapter Twenty-Two Roberta

Roberta rings the door bell and hops up and down on the step. She looks at the familiar blank faces of the houses around her in the Square. She’s very pleased with herself. Everything seems to be working out as she hoped it might. Not only had she received a delighted-sounding text from Anya, who has secured herself some sort of practising gig round here on the Blüthner involving cash, but Patrick personally called to thank her. He sounded absolutely delighted that someone at last was taking that piano seriously. She was very pleased to have pleased him. She liked Patrick with a strength of feeling which she didn’t often have for her clients. At this moment, she loved him.

The door opens. Roberta masks a momentary flinch of disappointment that neither Patrick, nor her small pupil is standing in front of her. It’s Jane. Her least favourite member of the household.

“Hello Jane,” she says, smiling graciously.

“Hello, Roberta,” says Jane, acknowledging automatically, then turning her back on the teacher as she greets her, in order to shout up the stairs at her child.

“George! Your lesson!”

There is silence from the top of the house.

Roberta puts her bag down.

There is no noise from upstairs.

“I’ll go and get him,” she says. “Do you mind?”

She has to say something. She is going to say it, because she knows it will annoy her client.

“So I hear Anya came round and played the Blüthner, how was that?”

Irritated that the piano teacher knows things about the house which happen when she is not there, Jane affects vague forgetfulness.

“Did she? I can’t remember. Not sure. Think so, but I was out.”

Roberta knows this is a lie. She knows that Jane was in the house when Anya turned up, she is certain she was, because Anya told her. She also knows that Anya has been asked to come round to the house regularly. She thinks this is probably not something to mention to Jane.

“Oh, maybe I got it wrong. I thought you might have heard her. I have to say, she’s a very good pianist. Really excellent. Beautiful touch.”

“Is she?” says Jane, absently. “Roberta, sorry to rush away but I really have got something rather crucial to do.”

What, like getting online to Ocado, thinks Roberta. She can see how Anya’s proficiency rattles her employer. Well, other people can be skilled too, you know. It’s not just the owners of houses in the Square. It is people like Anya, and myself. People who have allotments and dull jobs, and make regular, ordinary shopping excursions to dull places like Tesco, not Waitrose. And I am not a ‘lesson’, either, she thinks sharply. I am a real person.

She walks upstairs.

“George, hello!” she calls. “It’s Roberta. I’m coming to extract you from your room.”

She’s quite keen to see his room. She is fond of George and she would like to see him in his terrain, as it were, rather than in the very adult world downstairs.

She knocks at what she guesses is his door. This is not a hard thing to divine since it is largely obscured by a giant poster of Obi-Wan Kenobi brandishing a large laser.

“Enter!” a small voice calls imperiously from inside the room.

She pushes open the door. The tone inside George’s bedroom is crepuscular since the curtains, which are decorated with a pattern of planets and comets, are closed.

The array of toys and pictures within are testimony to an entire life; George’s life, so far. There are still framed nursery rhymes on the wall from his baby years, alongside the long rectangle and florid Latin motto of the Official Prep School Photograph. His entire Lego city is also there, balancing precariously on his desk.

“Good afternoon my dear,” says George. He is crouching over a computer.

“I am just working on my Film. The Film for which I shall play a live accompaniment at the Talent Show. I have decided,” he says, sitting back on his haunches, “to wear a Storm Trooper outfit for the night. My friend Finn has lent me his Storm Trooper. In return for a fortnight of my Lego spider from the Lord of the Rings Collection.” George pauses and considers the deal. “I think he will, anyway.”

“Blimey,” says Roberta. “I bet you’ll win the contest dressed like that. Storm Troopers usually win, don’t they? Can I see what you’ve done so far with the film?”

“No Roberta, they do not usually win,” says George. “They are the elite military soldiers of the Empire, under the rule of Darth Vader. They are the enemy.”

But Roberta is not listening. She is watching George’s short animated film on his computer. She is watching something which in a minute’s time she will hope she does not understand, something which will cause anxiety to surge through her body to her fingertips.

On the screen, a small Lego figure in a black cape and helmet is moving rather jerkily around several tall thin connected houses, also constructed from Lego. First, he is outside. There is a small tree, and a dog.

“That is Darth Vader,” says George from behind her shoulder.

Roberta nods, concentrating.

“He is visiting our Square. Here he is outside our house.” He pauses. “You’ll have to imagine me playing the piano here. You know, that first rather dull bit of Hanon that you always make me do.”

Roberta smiles.

In the next shot, Darth Vader then appears to be inside a house. He moves towards a table around which people are sitting.

“A boring party. The sort of thing my parents are always having. People just sitting talking. For HOURS.”

Darth Vader leaves the party. He now has a laser in his hand.

“What’s happening now?”

“This is Darth Vader summoning the Death Star. I am playing shooting sounds now, like this,
Peow Peow.
”

“Is the Death Star his ship?”

“My dear, have you never SEEN
Star Wars
?”

Humbled, Roberta continues to watch while George’s tiny hero executes a number of aerial tumbles and moves, with the laser. He then appears to hide behind a sofa.

At this point, two other Lego figures enter the scene. One male, one female.

They move to one side of the room. They are closely bonded together.

“Who on earth is this? What’s going on?” asks Roberta, with a slowly growing sense of dread.

“Oh, that’s my mother and Jay, our neighbour,” says George, casually. “I think he was giving her some sort of massage the other night. When they had a dinner party. I was still downstairs by mistake, behind the sofa. I was meant to be in bed, but I was still up. And I thought it was really funny, seeing them on the sofa, and how funny it would be if Darth Vader suddenly appeared and brandished his lightsabre at them. Do you know, after Jay, our neighbour, had finished hugging her, he smacked her! On the bum-bum! I have never seen a grown-up do THAT before.”

“You are going to show this film at the Talent Show?”

“Yes. It’s taken me DAYS. It’s all start stop animation. Done on my bed. Look, here.”

He shows Roberta the ‘set’ which is lying in pieces on the floor.

Through waves of piercing anxiety, Roberta realises that if this film is shown at the Talent evening there will probably be no more piano lessons, anywhere, on the Square, for quite some time. And that she will probably be held responsible for George broadcasting a short film of his mother’s adultery with the neighbour. She is going to have to think about a strategy. She must consign this film to the oblivion of erasure. She is going to have to come up with something, quite fast, the Talent Show is ten days away.

“George, this is great. But we must go and have our lesson. And I think we need to chat about it. Shall we turn the computer off, for now?”

“Sure, sure. Do you like it so far? Do you like the animation? I’ve got quite a bit more to do, you know.”

“It’s great. But I think I may have some other ideas for you.”

“But I don’t want your ideas. I have my own ideas.”

“Yes, I know. But I have some good ideas which might go with your ideas. The best ideas are joint ideas, has nobody ever told you that?”

Roberta swallows, hard.

The giant figure of Obi-Wan gently swings behind her as she carefully closes the door, and leads her small charge downstairs. She thinks of the computer upstairs, with its lethal cargo, and feels nauseated.

She settles him at the piano stool.

“Right, now. Let’s play ‘The Bells of St Paul’s’.”

“Really? My dear, have we not grown out of that piece?”

“No, I think it’s a great piece for you. And I think it’s a great piece for the show.”

“What, the Talent Show?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve changed my mind about Hanon. I think it’s just too dull.”

“Hanon? Dull? But you always said it was an important structural thing to do and would help enormously with my fingering.”

“Yes, yes. But honestly George, it’s an exercise. It’s like turning up as… as a Storm Trooper and simply walking up and down in your gear. Never turning the lightsabre on.”

“Storm Troopers don’t HAVE lightsabres. They have Elite Guns.”

“Well, their Elite Guns, then,” says Roberta, flustered.

“Alrighty,” says George. It’s a phrase he has picked up from Patrick. He thinks it makes him sound an awful lot older, like a boy almost in Year 5.

“Now, ‘The Bells of St Paul’s’ is a great piece because it’s all about these little boys, isn’t it? Climbing over the walls and knocking all the apples down with their sticks?”

“Yee… eessss?” says George. The long drawn out affirmative has also been learned from Patrick.

“Well, I thought that would be such a lovely thing to put onto a film. You could make those Lego trees, and you could make little boys, and… ” She looks at his face. It has gone very red again.

“But what about Finn and my Storm Trooper outfit?” he says miserably. “I really wanted to do something about
Star Wars.”

“Yes but you can’t do it about
Star Wars
at HOME,” says Roberta firmly. Then she has a sudden thought. “It’s against copyright.”

“What? Is it?”

“Yes,” she says. “George Lucas won’t allow any publication of a fantasy world alongside the world of reality with his patented characters. I read it somewhere.”

“But I am not publishing anything.”

“Showing a film at the Talent Show accounts for publishing. I think George Lucas wants to keep everything intact, not allowing it to go out into the, the outer world. As it were. Now, if you were just to show the fantasy characters on their own, in their fantasy world, that would be fine. Alright, let’s not play ‘The Bells of St Paul’s’. Let’s do something completely new. Let’s have a look in this book,” says Roberta, flicking through
Easy Classics For Piano
as she speaks.

“Aha!” she says, triumphantly. “Here it is! The theme tune for
Star Wars!
Composed by… ”

“John Williams,” says George. He looks up hopefully. “Is it in there?”

“You bet it is. And I will help you learn it. Do you have a version of the Death Star in Lego?”

George looks at his teacher. “What about the copyright? Isn’t that going to be disallowed because of copyright?”

Why do I have to have such a bright pupil, thinks Roberta.

“Oh, this piece is out of copyright because so many small boys want to play it. That’s why it’s in this book. Now let’s have a look at it. Could you play this while you show one of your Lego
Star Wars…
ships flying around? Do you have any?”

A small smile plays around his red lips. “My dear,” he says, “I have General Grievous’ Starfighter, with 1,085 pieces.”

He puts his fingers on the keys and plays the chord of C Major four times. Da da da DAH.

“And I have the Millennium Falcon. Version Six, 1,237 pieces. It took me eight months to build it.”

“Well,” says Roberta, “phew. Why don’t we use them? And we can get some sort of backdrop with planets on it and get those things flying around. You can film it and then on the night, you can show the film, and play the John Williams masterwork. In your Storm Trooper outfit from Finn. Happy?”

To her delight, George nods his head. The way she put it, with the mention of his friend, and the uniform, meant that it was going to happen. It really was.