Pillow Talk (4 page)

‘But the cards
will
know,’ Kitty says darkly, fiddling with the hoop in her right nostril.

‘Go on,’ Eric says, ‘let her read for you. You might discover you're to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger.’

‘But I have my tall, dark, handsome Rob,’ Petra protests and raises her eyebrow defiantly at Eric who has already raised his at her.

Kitty shrugs. ‘Another time, then. I need to get on with my cuff.’ She unwraps from a soft cloth her current work in progress: delicate swirls and serpentines in white gold, like calligraphy in three dimensions, which she's designed to be worn around the upper arm.

‘It's stunning,’ Petra tells her.

‘Thanks,’ Kitty says shyly. ‘I just wish I didn't owe my gem dealer so much – I really want those rubies for here, here, here and there.’

‘Those earrings you made for Gallery Tom Foolery – they'll sell like hot cakes,’ Gina says encouragingly.

‘Hope so,’ Kitty smiles and tucks herself in to her bench. ‘Is it a Radio 2 day or a Classic FM day?’ Eric procrastinates.

‘Two.’

‘Two.’

‘Don't mind.’

And the group settles down to work. Kitty filing and filing in pursuit of perfection; lemel, or gold dust, gathering like specks of wishes glinting in the pigskin slung like a hammock, hanging over her lap from the curved inlet of her bench. Gina is scrutinizing turquoise and amber. Eric buffs and polishes two wedding rings he's just finished, his hair safely away from the spin of the machine in a girly topknot, his eyes protected by goggles.

Petra wonders what she actually has the energy to do. She has some out-work from Charlton Squire, the gallery owner and jeweller who takes a sizeable commission of her sales but who keeps her earnings a little more constant by giving her his own designs to make up. She sips tea. She is starting to feel more human. She sends Rob a text to say sorry bout last nite – ta 4 saving me! hope meeting v.g. luv u! p xxx

Spring sunshine filters through the dusty studio windows. Eric looks so comical and sweet. Kitty is stooped in concentration, the cuff sending out dazzles of light as the sun catches it. Gina is beating life into silver by beating the hell out of it, singing along to the radio between clouts from her hammer.

I like this song, Petra hums to herself. She analyses Charlton's design, sticking the papers to the wall in front of her. She chooses her tools. A sudden thunder of hammering from Gina drowns out the presenter's rambling and when Gina stops, the next song playing is one she doesn't know and therefore can't sing along to.

But Petra knows it.

Instantly, Petra is wide awake and utterly alert, transported back seventeen years, back to school, back to being fifteen. Back to that strange lunch-time after she'd first met Mrs McNeil, when she was serenaded across the packed school hall by a Sixth Former from Milton College. Arlo Savidge.

The song playing just now is “Among the Flowers” and its exquisite melody and gentle lyrics drift out of the communal stereo straight into Petra's soul.

Chapter Three

But it's not Arlo's voice. At least, I don't think it is. In fact, I'm sure it isn't. His voice is still crystal clear in my memory – though I'm having to rack my brains to remember exactly what he looked like.

Arlo Savidge. I wonder whatever happened to Arlo Savidge. Who would know? I don't keep in touch with anyone from school and I never heard from or of him after I left. It wasn't unrequited love – because he never actually asked and so there was never anything I could actually answer and of course nothing ever really happened. But it
was
love, in its own gentle, quirky way. A love without a kiss, without a single touch, let alone a declaration. More pure, probably, than any physical relationship I've had. It was all so beautifully and yearningly unsaid. And yet we only knew each other for just under eighteen months.

I felt as though there was a spotlight on me, during that one song in that one lunch-time at school. As if Arlo had told an invisible lighting technician that there was a girl in the Lower Fifth, milling with her pals in the middle of the crowd and when I sing I'll be singing to her so can you shine a light and pick her out so she knows. So that she knows how I feel and so that she will feel special.

And his song was the light and I knew all right. I felt it. It was odd and I felt as though I didn't know where to look, as though I wanted desperately to look away but of course I couldn't because I was transfixed. I do remember his eyes even though he was over there, up on the stage. It was only later that I knew what colour they were. Blue. Very very blue. His eyes were locked onto mine – even when he closed them with emotion, he'd open them straight into my gaze. He didn't glance away once, he didn't look at anyone else and I don't think I even blinked. And I do remember his lanky physique, his white school shirtsleeves rolled just above his elbows, the lovely strong forearms of his burgeoning masculinity. You could see his muscles delineate according to how passionately his played his guitar. He stood, legs slightly apart but relaxed, one foot tapping the rhythm, lips right against the mike. He had nice hair, I remember at the time thinking he had
cool
hair – in retrospect, it was nice and cool in that archetypically schoolboy way – just about within the school regulation side of Jim Morrison. Carefully unkempt curls and waves. Sandy rather than blond.

But it wasn't him as a package that I fancied. In fact, I didn't ever really fancy Arlo – I bypassed that stage and fell in quiet love. Fancy was too vulgar a reaction to being serenaded. I remember loving him in an instant because he was singing to me, because, somehow, he had written that song for me. And the magic between us must have come from him not knowing he'd written it for me until he saw me that day and me not knowing what it felt like to be at the centre of someone's world until just then. I think he felt that way too. But I don't know because he never said and I never asked.

Is she walking all alone
Is she lonely in the flowers.

But this voice, today, is not Arlo's. It's his song but it's not him. Though no doubt his voice will have changed over the intervening seventeen years, it won't have changed into this. It'll probably have just deepened a little, lost a slice of its purity, gained a little worldly gravel to its timbre.

Whatever happened to Arlo Savidge?

I remember feeling woozy, a little breathless, that lunch-time. It was so thrilling – me, a Lower Fifth Year, being the focus of a Sixth Former. It was, I suppose, the most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for me. Rob took me to Claridges for my thirty-second birthday in December, but that was ostentation, not romance; we'd only been together a few months. And he bought me a pen from Tiffany for Christmas and red roses on Valentine's Day. But all of that is relatively easy if you can afford it. Back then, Arlo only had pocket money yet he created something unique and beautiful and precious. And lasting.

I wonder if he has ever stopped to wonder, over the years, whether I've been walking all alone, whether I've been lonely in the flowers? Rob sent me flowers last month after that blazing row when he stood me up but when they were delivered I buried my nose in them and as I inhaled their heady scent I sobbed. I felt desperately alone in those flowers.

Things seem to be quite good at the moment. Or at least, they're getting better.

But just perhaps, just say things were better way back then. They say that our school years are the best years of our lives. Do I agree? Is that true? Is it still too early to tell? But I think back to all I achieved, to the colourful mix of my schoolmates, to the eccentricities of my teachers. Have I ever been part of such an intense mêlée of uniqueness since? We had school uniform – yet though young and not quite formed, we all stood distinct. When I went to college, all we students shared an unofficial, interchangeable uniform of our own which made everyone blend and bland. Slouchy grouchy stressed and broke. I don't even know where Arlo went to university. Maybe he's a super rock god in America. Perhaps he jacked it all in and is an accountant. Maybe he's an impoverished musician in a garret in Clerkenwell. Or perhaps he's a middle-class husband with 2.4 kids. Perhaps the litheness and the curls are gone and he has a paunch and a bald patch. I don't know. But how beautiful that his music will always exist. What a legacy. It's on the radio. It's finishing.

‘
That was Rox and a hit from five years ago, “Among the Flowers”. Beautiful. And it's approaching midday so it's over to Annie for the news and weather.
’

Did you hear that? It was a hit five years ago. Where was I back then that I never heard it? Nowhere in particular. It just passed me by. How odd. Am I that square not to know what was top of the sodding pops five years ago? I
have
heard of Rox. But I didn't know they covered Arlo's song. I wonder how they came by it? Are there other bands out there covering his other tracks? Is he some hugely successful songwriter? Why am I even wondering about any of this? I saw him so rarely, if I think about it.

My school and Milton College used to join up for activities like choral society and pottery and drama club. I was never outgoing enough to go for drama club, and choral society was a bit naff, but I was very good at pottery. That summer term – the term after that lunch-time gig – I used to walk over to Milton College with Anna and Paula on Wednesday afternoons to do pottery. Some of the boys asked us if we'd come because we were good with our hands; I took it as a compliment and said yes – but Anna and Paula took it as a come-on and they were delighted and said things like, That's for us to know and you to find out, guys.

We
were
good with our hands, us three. Very good. Paula and Anna took to the wheel and threw gorgeous pots and bowls. I liked working more organically and constructed great big urns that were really glorified coil pots which I'd burnish and burnish and then scarify the sheened surface with these dense little marks like hieroglyphics. I spent hours on them. Because it was summer, Mr WhateverHisNameWas let me sit outside with my pots and my tools and that's when I saw Arlo again. He walked across the playground over to me, like a strolling troubadour, strumming and humming until we shared a great big grin. Then he sat a little way off, playing.

Every Wednesday afternoon after that, during that summer term, he'd somehow appear when I appeared, mostly with his guitar. He never sang ‘Among the Flowers’ for me again. Not from beginning to end. Not with the words. Every now and then he'd hum it and strum it but very delicately, slipping a few bars in between other melodies. We kept each other's company, those Wednesday afternoons, though we didn't say much at all. I asked him what A levels he was doing. I can't remember now. He asked me how many O levels I was taking. Christ, how many did I take? Eight. And passed seven. He told me about some of the mad teachers at his school. I told him all about Mrs McNeil. And then I didn't really see him until the following spring because I chose print-making during the winter term. And though he'd've been swotting for A levels, he did find time most Wednesdays to find me. And we just picked up from where we'd left off.

‘How's your little old lady?’ he'd ask, when we were sitting not talking and not really working. I'd tell him some of the stories she told me, some of the funny little errands I ran for her. Once he covered his eyes and winced and I asked what was wrong and he said my halo was so shiny and bright it hurt his eyes and I chucked a little wet clod of terracotta clay at him and he laughed. Mostly though, we shared happy little interludes of chat in an otherwise quietly industrious atmosphere. I was engrossed in my terracotta urns and he was deep in thoughts of chords and riffs. Out in the playground, in the warmth of his final summer term at school. We'd sit together, though we were actually a couple of yards apart. We were certainly sitting together none the less, separate yet united in our little hive of creativity and tenderness every Wednesday afternoon.

And now I make jewellery. I wonder what Arlo does because he used to make music. And, for the first time in seventeen years, I've just heard the song he wrote for me. On national radio.

Chapter Four

‘Sir,’ Nathan whined, ‘
sir
.’ He'd been saying ‘sir’ for ages but Sir didn't seem to hear. Sir seemed a bit lost in thought, somewhat distracted by the bright spring morning ablaze outside. ‘Sir! Mr Savidge!
Sir
Savidge.’

Nathan's teacher finally turned his attention to him, raised an eyebrow. ‘I'm liking the “Sir Savidge” moniker, Nathan. In fact, class – you can all call me Sir Savidge from now on. OK?’

‘Yes, sir. Savidge. Sir.’

‘Nathan – what can I do for you?’

‘Would you say that rhythm is the soul of music, sir?’

Arlo regarded his pupil, unable to keep an affectionate smile at bay. He remembered being just like Nathan. A keen fourteen-year-old, happy to study but also keen to add personal philosophy to the dry curriculum. God, what a gorgeous day it was. Warm too.

‘I mean, Sir Savidge, sir,’ Nathan said. ‘Rhythm is the soul of music – wouldn't you say?’ he repeated, dragging his teacher's gaze away from the view outside. ‘But sir, if you put that kind of thing in your GCSE do you think the judges give you better marks?’

Judges. Sirs. Arlo changed his sigh into another smile and focused on the boy. ‘I think the examiners would mark you higher if you said something along the lines of rhythm being the
lifeblood
of music, Nathan. Think of blood, all of you – how it pulses, how it pumps. If blood doesn't pump – if it ceases to pulse around our bodies – what are we?’

The class was silent.

‘Come on, guys, what are we?’

The class loved it when their teacher called them ‘guys’.

‘Fish?’ offered Lars.

‘
Fish?
’ said his teacher.

‘Fish are cold-blooded,’ Lars muttered while the class began to snigger. ‘Isn't that the same thing?’

‘No no no,’ Arlo said, thinking he ought to check it anyway with Mr Rose the biology teacher. ‘I'm talking physically and metaphysically. Come on, guys, if our blood isn't being pumped then it's not pulsing around our body – then what are we?’

The boys gawped at him.

‘We are dead!’ he said.

There was a murmur, a gasp or two. Schoolboys love the word ‘dead’.

‘So, if rhythm is the lifeblood of music, it must mean it is at the
heart
of it. Music needs rhythm to breathe its life into the listener – don't you think?’ There was silence as twenty-five pens scribbled away at exercise books, frantic to copy Sir's quote verbatim. Good old Lars with his fish, Arlo thought. But poor old Nathan – he'd been on the right track but with the wrong metaphor, just a little un-scientific when it came to the particular anatomy of music. Arlo considered how, though the whole class was committing his improvement on Nathan's quote to memory, the GSCE examiners would no doubt put a red line through the lot. ‘If it's not on the curriculum, it doesn't exist,’ Arlo said under his breath though not so quietly that the eternally eager Finn right in front of him didn't start to write that down too.

‘Finn – you can't quote me on that.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

Arlo glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes till his charges swapped rhythm for the thwack of leather against willow. ‘Mussorgsky and Marley,’ he announced, browsing the CD shelves much to the boys' anticipation. ‘They knew a thing or two about rhythm,’ Arlo said, loading discs into the machine. He tapped the remote control against his lips. ‘The Russian, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, died in 1881 and the Jamaican, Robert Nesta Marley, died in 1981. Listen to this.’ He chose “Pictures at an Exhibition” by the former and “Get Up Stand Up” by the latter. The boys were entranced; toes tapped, rulers and pens bounced gently against the edges of the desks. They would gladly have relinquished cricket to listen to more but the bell went and Mr Savidge ejected the discs and released the class.

‘Well done, guys,’ he said. ‘See you whenever.’ And he took up his gazing out of the window.

From the empty classroom, Arlo looked out across the rolling manicured lawn to the plotted and pieced playing fields beyond. He considered that schoolboys in cricket whites at that distance were basically interchangeable with the sheep scattering the North York Moors beyond the school's grounds. They shared that peculiar characteristic of inactivity interrupted by sudden bouts of gleeful gambolling. But neither sheep nor cricket did much for Arlo. He was more of a dogs and tennis chap. Just then, he quite fancied a knock-around on court. He checked his timetable. He had a couple of hours until he taught the first years but then only the odd half-hour during the rest of the day and no opportunity that evening because he was on prep duty. He gathered his papers and books into the worn leather satchel the boys often teased him about and wandered over towards the main building.

He came across Paul Glasper in the staff room, enjoying a cup of coffee with the illicit luxury of the
Sun
newspaper. ‘It's today's,’ Paul bragged.

‘Who smuggled that in?’ Arlo laughed.

‘One of those blokes doing the electrics in Armstrong House,’ Paul said.

‘There's a waiting list for it,’ came Nigel Garton's voice from behind a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
which better befitted his Head of Physics stature, ‘and I'm next.’

‘You lot are incorrigible,’ said Miranda Oates, enjoying a digestive biscuit and a copy of
Heat
magazine. Arlo flicked his finger against it. Miranda peered up at him. ‘There's more world news in this than in
that
,’ she said, tossing her head in the direction of Paul and the
Sun
. ‘This is essential reading,’ she smiled. ‘It helps me keep my finger on the zeitgeist. It helps me understand my students.’

‘Bollocks!’ came Nigel's voice from behind the
Telegraph
, while Paul asked Miranda if he could have a flip through the magazine once she'd finished.

‘Only an English teacher could use “zeitgeist” in such a context,’ Arlo laughed, spooning instant coffee granules into a relatively clean mug. ‘Anyone for tennis? Paul? Fancy a knock-about?’

‘I'm busy,’ said Paul, shaking the
Sun
and snapping it open again.

‘Dickhead,’ Arlo laughed. ‘Nige? Come on, a quick game, set and match? You slaughtered me last week.’

‘And I'd love to slaughter you again, but I'm nipping into Stokesley for a haircut.’

‘You look gorgeous, Mr Garton,’ Arlo teased, ‘for a physics teacher.’

‘I've got a date,’ Nigel said.

‘I'll come,’ said Miranda.

‘No, you won't,’ Nigel said, ‘much as a threesome is on my wish list. But I try not to bed my colleagues.’

‘Not with you, prat,’ she said, ‘with
you
, Arlo – I'll have a knock-up with you.’

‘Ooh er, missy,’ murmured Paul, who obviously wasn't as engrossed in the
Sun
as the others thought.

Arlo gave her a glancing smile and made much of checking his watch. ‘Actually, on second thoughts, I think I'll go into Stokesley with Nige and get my hair cut too.’

‘You haven't got any bloody hair, Arlo,’ Paul piped up again.

‘I have more than you,’ said Arlo, running the palm of his hand lightly over the fuzz of his crop. ‘This is long, for me. I can practically do a comb-over on my receded parts.’

‘Do you have a date too?’ Paul asked.

Arlo baulked.

‘Well, you're not joining me,’ Nigel protested.

Paul caught the look on Miranda's face that said, I'll be your date Arlo, before she buried her head in
Heat
when she sensed she'd been noticed.

‘Miranda's got a demon serve,’ Paul told Arlo.

‘Another time,’ Arlo told her. ‘I'll come into Stokesley with you, Nige.’

They belted along an empty road, lush flat fields to the left soon giving way to the sparser grazing on the moors rising and rolling away.

‘Daft, isn't it,’ Arlo remarked. ‘We're the teachers but I feel like I'm bunking off.’

‘You need to get out more,’ Nigel teased.

‘Probably,’ Arlo conceded. ‘It's just so easy to not leave the school grounds now. When I first joined, I was exploring the region at every opportunity – rarely stayed in unless I was on duty. Now, four years on, I go out for a haircut, or to the pub once a week for precisely three pints and a scotch, and that's about it.’

‘It's cyclical,’ Nigel said. ‘I went through that. But I've been there two years longer than you and I'm telling you, I now plan my next outing hourly.’

‘Who's your date?’ Arlo asked.

‘She's called Jennifer,’ said Nigel. ‘I met her in Great Ayton last weekend. She was in front of me in the ice-cream queue at Suggitts.’

‘You sad old git,’ Arlo laughed, ‘spending your free time hanging out at ice-cream shops waiting for totty.’

‘Sod off,’ Nigel said. ‘She's a lawyer. She was with some cycling group and they'd stopped off at Suggitts. You know how they do. All those Sunday riders.’

‘Well,’ Arlo said thoughtfully, ‘good luck.’

‘Haven't had a shag in months,’ Nigel muttered. He looked at Arlo though he knew the answer. ‘You?’

‘Nope,’ Arlo said, assuming Nigel knew it was actually years but didn't dare comment.

‘Miranda Oates would have you,’ Nigel told him.

‘I don't mix work and pleasure,’ Arlo said.

‘All work and no play … as they say,’ Nigel warned him, pulling into a parking bay and putting a permit on his dashboard.

‘She isn't my type,’ Arlo said.

‘Who is, then?’ Nigel asked as they walked towards the barbers. ‘In all the time I've known you, I haven't a clue who your
type
is.’

‘It's not that simple,’ said Arlo, relieved that they'd arrived.

*

Half an hour later, they were back in the car, Nigel's short black hair slicked this way and that with product-assisted trendy nonchalance. Arlo's hair was cropped even closer to his head, the style coming more from the fine shape of his skull, his smooth forehead, the slight but neat receding of his hairline. ‘I can't believe they charge me twelve quid for what was essentially a couple of minutes with mini horse clippers.’

‘Mine was twelve quid too – and I had a blow-dry and a load of styling goop,’ Nigel laughed.

‘And you look lovely, darling,’ Arlo said drily. ‘It'll be your lucky night.’ Nigel swerved as he turned to wink at Arlo, before tootling more cautiously through Stokesley and back out into the countryside.

‘It's a nice enough spring day – but this is a wee bit optimistic,’ Arlo commented, as “Summer in the City” played on the radio. Both he and Nigel knew they would have to tolerate the usual squalls and sudden chills of April before they could move truly to spring, let alone nearer to summer.

‘What exactly is a “loving spoonful”, I've always wondered,’ mused Nigel. ‘I think it might be a type of cake. Or a wedding spoon like those Welsh love spoons. Or perhaps a feed-the-poor charity?’

‘Stop philosophising and step on it, will you,’ Arlo said. ‘We'll miss last lunch at this rate.’

‘My hunger is for Jenn,’ Nigel growled lustily.

‘You prick,’ Arlo laughed. ‘Come on, I'm starving.’

They drove along, commenting on the Radio 2 playlist, humming and occasionally singing out loud. Nigel started some lengthy anecdote about a previous girlfriend and a curry when suddenly Arlo wasn't listening at all because “Among the Flowers” was playing on the radio. The lyrics more chantingly familiar to him than the words to the Lord's Prayer. The melody the theme tune to his life.

‘Do you remember this one?’ said Nigel, turning up the volume and tra-la-ing to the closing bars. ‘Awesome song.’

‘I wrote it,’ Arlo said quietly.

Nigel laughed. ‘And I wrote “Jumping Jack Flash”.’

Arlo didn't respond. What was the point? The song, so much a part of his life, was nevertheless part of a past life so different and distant to that which he currently led.

Now “Mr Tambourine Man” was playing.

‘And I wrote this one, too,’ Nigel said, singing along dreadfully. ‘Hang on, this isn't Bob Dylan.’

‘It's the Byrds,’ Arlo said patiently. ‘Dylan wrote it. The Byrds adapted the lyrics and added a twelve-string guitar lead and I did write the one before.’

‘“The One Before”?’

‘No – the previous song. “Among the Flowers”.’

‘Sure you did,’ said Nigel, busy zooming up the school's majestic driveway, whacking over the speed ramps, hurtling into the car park with a lively skid along the meticulously raked gravel. He switched off the engine.

‘I did,’ said Arlo.

‘You need to get out more, Savidge,’ said Nigel, ‘you really do.’