The Square (22 page)

“I know,” he says. “We shall use my curtains as the set.”

Saved, thinks Roberta.

Chapter Twenty-Three Tracey

Tracey pushes her way into the crowded West End jazz bar where a pianist is sitting hammering at an old Berry upright. Next to him, a man is brushing a drum with steel brushes. They are playing that old standard, ‘Ain’t Misbehaving’. Well, she wasn’t. She was having fun, though. A week of filming, not a week of packaging up cosmetics and organising people to go and sell them for her. This is her treat to mark the end of the shoot, a drink with Alan at his favourite bar.

Where was he? She suddenly sees him by the long bar, an island in the middle of the room. He is sitting on a stool with two glasses of Champagne at his elbow. His suit is as immaculate as ever. She notices with pleasure that he is wearing a tiny touch of the mascara she had recommended. She slides onto the empty stool he has reserved, next to him.

“Bubble?” he says.

She breathes in the effervescent liquid.

“Oh Alan. I cannot tell you how glad I am to be here.”

“Why is that?” asks Alan Makin.

“Because at home I am Public Enemy Number One. Thanks to you!”

The piano continues its honky tonk routine, and suddenly the Square didn’t matter too much, to Tracey.

She laughs as she sips the cool drink.

“Oh, no, why?”

“It’s all your fault, Alan.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really! Harriet, Harriet, my neighbour. You know, who I went to the marquee with on that first time? Well she also had the idea that you should present our little show. And anyway I told her I had already asked you, and you had said yes.”

“Yes, so? And?”

“Well, I went and told Jane. And she was so cross!”

It had not been an easy encounter. Tracey had bumped into Jane in the afternoon as she was awkwardly shoehorning George out of the family car, on his way back from school.

“Oh, Jane, just the person,” said Tracey to Jane’s pert bottom.

“Hi,” Jane had said, standing up immediately, turning round, smoothing down her dress, tucking her hair back behind her ears. She did not look overly pleased to see her neighbour. George scrambled out of the car behind her and began to walk along the kerb, loudly singing ‘Frère Jacques’.

“Hi, hi. I wanted to ask you whether I might make a suggestion for the Talent Show?”

“Fire away.”

“Well, you know I am doing this filming with Alan, you know, Alan Makin. It’s going really really well.”

“Great. I’m delighted for you. Really pleased.”

“And the thing is that Alan really loves the Square. Loves everything in it. I’ve told him all about us, and our Association, and the Show, and the fundraising, so… ”

“So?”

“I asked him if he wouldn’t mind hosting the Talent Show.”

There is a barely discernable pause, a beat of silence.

“Hosting it?”

Tracey suddenly sees the gulf between her idea, and Jane’s master plan. She feels she needs backup.

“It was Harriet’s idea, actually. She thought we needed, she thought it would be sort of nice, to have a celebrity do it.”

“Oh, did she? Rather than keep it all in the Square? My, celebrity culture really has taken hold of everyone, hasn’t it!” said Jane, with a harsh giggle. “First the Lottery comes to call,
grace à vous
, then it’s all about famous people.”

“Is that okay?” says Tracey. She is not even going to acknowledge the Lottery dig.

“I mean, had you thought about a presenter?”

“Yes I had. I mean, I thought I was going to step into the role myself. Though only, and this is the honest truth, because I couldn’t think of anyone else mad enough to do it. But if you and Harriet think we need a celebrity, that’s fine. Just fine. Great.”

“Oh, Jane are you sure? Are you really happy about it? I mean, do you want to do it?”

“Nah. No, I don’t,” said Jane, who had privately been working out her opening words and had already booked a hair appointment for the day before.

“No, that’s fine. Have you actually asked him, though? Will we have to pay him? Have you even thought about that?”

“Oh, I have asked him already,” says Tracey, with a thrill of correcting Jane running right through her, “and he says he’d love to. I don’t think there will be any payment. No, I haven’t exactly put it to him in those words, but I think that all should be fine. Do I need to give him a running order, or special words to say, or shall I leave it up to him?”

“Mummy, can we go now?” said George, who had returned to the car, and was pulling at her coat.

“Let’s talk about that later,” said Jane with a flinty smile. “Sorry, must dash.”

And with that, she had disappeared into her house, leaving Tracey standing on the pavement.

“And that was that.” Tracey looks at Alan, laughing. “As I said. Public Enemy Number One. Whoops!”

“Well, never mind,” says Alan. “The political intrigue of a Garden Square in London. Fascinating.”

“But you will still do it, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” he reassures her. “And no, I don’t need a fee, in case you are wondering. Is she performing in the show itself?”

“No. Her son is. I think he is playing the piano and showing a film, or something.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“Oh, God, I hadn’t thought. I was going to leave it to Belle and Grace to cook something up. Maybe I’ll do something with them.”

She sighs, sips her Champagne again.

“You look great. That the new foundation?”

“Yep. And a tiny touch of the mascara.”

“Thought so. It looks perfect. Just gives you the definition you need.”

“You sound so professional when you talk about makeup,” says Alan, smiling at her.

All at once, there is a commotion on the other side of the bar. A man in a green shirt is trying to catch Alan’s attention.

“Hey, Alan! Alan Makin!” yells the man.

Alan and Tracey look up. Alan smiles at the man, acknowledges his presence graciously.

“Viewers,” he says to Tracey, who sits back on her stool, overwhelmingly impressed. This happy state of affairs lasts about two seconds, before it is made manifestly clear that this is not a particularly grateful viewer.

“Alan Makin, I’ve seen you on television and you are nothing but a great big cunt!” shouts the man.

“Supporting those bankers, those wankers, I saw that show you did, what about their bonuses, eh?”

Alan’s smile has vanished. His face is white. He puts the palms of his hands down on his trousers, and turns to Tracey.

“They either tell you how marvellous you are, or how hideous you are,” he says, with a twisted grimace.

“God, Alan,” says Tracey, shocked. “Really?”

“Hey! Alan Makin! Makin! You are a cunt, do you hear me!” shouts the green-shirted man again. People start moving awkwardly away from him. Alan is frozen to the spot on his bar stool opposite. The pianist gamely continues to play jazz. This time, the bar staff respond. One burly man from behind the bar lifts up the counter, and moves round expertly to the green-shirted man, taking him firmly by the elbow.

“Come on, mate.”

“Bankers and their bonuses! They are all cunts, and you are the biggest one of them!” The piano has stopped playing. There is total silence in the jazz bar.

“Arsehole!” is the man’s final volley. He is summarily ejected from the bar.

There is an uneasy silence around the bar. The pianist starts playing again.

Tracey picks up her Champagne flute and drains it.

“Shall we go?” asks Alan.

She nods silently, slides off the bar stool.

“Does that sort of thing really happen often?” she says as they walk silently away from the bar.

“Well, probably once or twice a year. It comes if you are regarded as In The Public Domain,” says Alan, proudly.

They are weaving through the crowds on Shaftesbury Avenue, past people queueing outside the theatres, standing in the street waving for taxis, running for buses. Someone bumps into Tracey. Alan genteelly takes her arm, guides her up a small side street.

“Well, that sort of put a hole in our evening. But it was an early evening drink. You probably have to be home by now, don’t you? What would you like to do? Do you think you ought to go home?”

“Oh, Alan, I feel it’s not right to end our drink on such a nasty note. What would you like to do?” says Tracey. She feels very sorry for him.

“I don’t know. But I do know actually, I need to be home pretty soon,” he says, snapping his wrist out and checking his watch.

“Oh, why? Have you got someone coming round?” she says. “I mean, sorry, obviously you probably have things to do,” she smiles, remembering they were only ever meeting for an early evening drink.

He pats his briefcase.

“Crickets. Live. They’ll only survive another forty minutes or so in here.”

“Oh my God!”

“Don’t worry. The container is quite, quite sealed. But I need to get them home.”

“Are you feeding them to… ”

“The Munchkin. You betcha. Want to come and help me?”

And so it is that Tracey, National Lottery winner, wife to Larry, mother to Belle and Grace, presence of light and laughter on the Square, goes back to Alan Makin’s flat to feed live crickets to a reptile.

“Wow, this is swanky,” she says as she gets out of the cab, surveys the balconied apartment block with its Caryatids, semi-nude women made of stone bearing the portico of the building. She takes in the spectacular views across the Heath and down to the City.

“Lubetkin,” murmurs Alan.

“Oh,” says Tracey, who has never heard the name before and wonders what it means.

“Based on Le Corbusier. Probably our most perfect example of international Modernism,” he says in the lift.

“Our what?”

“Britain’s. You know, Le Corbusier. The vertical city.”

Thus thoroughly daunted by this introduction to pre-War Futurist architecture, Tracey humbly follows Alan as the lift doors open, seemingly straight into the hall of his apartment on the fourth floor of Highpoint Two.

She walks into a double-height living room. It is white, immaculate, pictureless. Gentle lights quietly illuminate a room furnished with low sofas and curved tables. Two giant windows on either side of the room reveal immaculate landscaped gardens, sloping down. The lights of London spread out before her, almost at her feet. There is a tree inside the room, by the window. An indoor tree, planted in a shiny steel pot. There is no mess, no trace of soil or leaves on the white vinyl floor. Tracey does not quite know how to respond.

“Alan, this is amazing.”

He has his back to her, is sorting out something by the bar. Tracey glances across, sees an illuminated case beside him. The Munchkin. The reptile is sitting on his branch, as perfectly immobile as when she first encountered him all those weeks ago at Makin TV.

“That’s it,” says Alan, almost to himself. He slides open a panel in the vitrine, expertly tips something into it, slides the panel shut at speed.

The Munchkin blinks twice, is galvanised into action. Still squatting on his twig, he swivels his head, tongue lashes the desperately leaping crickets who are hopelessly trying to escape their certain fate, and crunches each in a matter of seconds.

“I don’t think I can look,” says Tracey weakly.

Alan comes up behind her with a glass of rosé and brings the wine across her body, gently brushing her breasts with his arm.

“Don’t. Just look at London,” he murmurs.

She takes the chilled wine, sips it, looks across the darkening Heath.

“Berthold Lubetkin,” murmurs Alan Makin into her ear. “He did the penguin pool at London Zoo. Then he paid attention to us human beings. Rather well, don’t you think?”

Tracey has no idea what or who he is talking about. She feels like she is standing in a museum. Or on the Moon.

After a minute or two looking out of the window, Alan decides against telling Tracey that Lubetkin, disciple of Tatlin, was also architect of Finsbury Health Centre. He wanders off and casually sits on one of the immaculate sofas. It is decorated by a row of plumped cushions all arranged like diamonds along it. Adjacent to the sofa, is a low table on which rests a perfect assemblage of glossy magazines, all current editions, and a vase of peonies, all in bloom.

Entranced by the united forces of wine, and perfect interior design, Tracey understands she is to join him beside this display. She knocks back the wine, deposits her glass on a mirrored plinth beside the indoor tree, and walks, slightly unsteadily, towards the sofa. She knows what will happen next. It is a play. That’s all it is. But the danger of it, the thrill of being in the moment, leads her forward. How dull life would be if she never experienced this moment, she thinks. As if he, Alan Makin, really did want to talk to her about makeup. What a fool. She should have had confidence in her first instinct. She realises she has started to sweat.

Alan proceeds to suddenly, expertly and confidently unbutton her shirt, unclasp her bra and suck her nipples. The last cogent thought that speeds through Tracey’s mind as she lies back on the sofa and allows her skirt to be slid down towards the floor, is to wonder how many cleaners Alan employs, and whether they turn up every day. She decides, as he removes her underwear, that they definitely do.

Chapter Twenty-Four Jane

He realises that he actually finds her too thin. He can trace the bones of her back with a finger. Her nipples jut out from tiny breasts. He knows Harriet aches to look like this. He sees her agonies every day. Standing at the fridge, worrying about whether to risk mayonnaise. She longs to be thin. But this is not the desired shape for Jay. Jane is simply too thin.

Still, he’s not going to make it spoil everything. He’s certainly not going to dump her. He doesn’t think he could, anyway. He is frightened about what it would do to her fragile, tense personality. And he loves the fact that she aches to have sex with him. She loves it. Any time, any place, anywhere. That is what really turns him on. It makes it hard to resist her. Knowing that she is always ready for it. Day or night. Morning or evening. Once they had sex on the way back from the school run. In the back of Jane’s Citroën. She had collected him after dropping George off and they had set to, in the car park of the shopping centre. On a picnic rug on the back seat. He enjoys the fact that she is always in a good mood after sex with him, too. Today is a perfect example of this.