The Square (4 page)

“Hello Harriet,” smiles Jane, high above her. She nods, as if she is taking a school register.

“Here we all are.”

Yes, we are, thinks Harriet. We’ve had this Association now for six years and all that’s actually happened has been an annual Christmas drinks do and the enforced closure of a youth club for young disadvantaged people on the corner, the shutting of which was hailed as a communal triumph.

People start to perch on the antique chairs.

“So, what are we talking about today?” asks Harriet, dully, to Jane.

“Oh, don’t you know? Hasn’t Jay shown you the agenda?”

“No, has he written one?”

Jane, momentarily flustered, puts her chin up and looks at Harriet like a small bird.

“I don’t actually know. I would think so, wouldn’t you?”

Harriet spots the tall figure of her son in the hall. Respite.

“Sorry, Jane, just a moment.” She moves away.

Brian. Her lovely son. How could Harriet have known that by the time he reached maturity, his name would become totally outmoded, a name of yesterday, redolent of football managers and tabloid editors. He tolerates it pretty well, thinks Harriet. Although, maybe it is the reason he spends so much time on that bloody computer. Maybe he has an ovatar, or whatever it’s called. A different name, anyway.

“Hi, Mum,” says Brian, leaning down to kiss her. “Residents’ meeting tonight, is it? Lucky you. I’ll go out.”

She raises her hands helplessly. “Sorry, darling.”

“Ooh, look at Dad, texting,” says Brian, gesturing into the room of people now all sitting bolt upright on the circle of chairs, waiting. “Thought that was rude, Dad!” he calls into the room. “Texting when there are people around. Naughty!”

Jay leaps back as if he has been kicked by a large horse.

“Brian! Right, everyone, sorry, ” he says, folding his device, but not turning it off, putting it into his pocket like a pack of cards he might at any time bring out again with a flourish.

“Shall we? Ahem. Welcome, all,” says Jay, as Brian leaves the house, a wry smile on his face.

“Now, I have written out an agenda. Don’t worry, it’s very short. It essentially deals with the railings around the Square which are in disrepair. The council won’t pay for them. I think the notion is that we will. And the notion is that we should, because otherwise the Square will become riddled with foxes and other undesirables.”

“Such as?” says the Single Mother, whose child attends a playgroup in the foyer of the council estate next door.

“Litter,” says Jay firmly. He knows what the agenda of the Single Mother is.

Jane stretches her legs, arches her feet in their very high heels, and looks at them. She slides her phone out of her pocket, checks it is on silent, and under the cover of her Prada bag, taps out a brief message.

Jane is texting Jay. Jane is sitting opposite Jay and texting him. Small snippets of erotica. About what she will do to him when they next meet. It turns her on. It is her fantasy, and she loves the outrageousness of doing it amid the formality of the Residents’ Association.

She presses send. Presently she hears a tiny buzz from the pocket of Jay’s trousers. She arches an eyebrow and knowingly takes a sip. Oh, God, she thinks. Cava. It’s not Champagne, but who cares. She’s having a good time.

Harriet sits, plumply, on her antique chair and watches Jane. She wonders what she is doing behind that bag. She wonders why Jane is so amused by a discussion about feeding the foxes in the Square. She starts thinking about what time everyone will push off, and what they might have for supper, she and Jay.

“Excuse me,” murmurs Jay. “Sorry. The office.” He quickly pulls his device from his pocket and attends to the text. Reads the message, squares his shoulders, envisages Jane in their downstairs shower room. Kneeling before him. Sucking him off. That was what her message was about.

He shakes his head slowly, breathes in. He can feel himself becoming excited, can sense Jane watching him intently from across the room.

“So, the railings,” he says.

Harriet watches everyone nodding, agreeing that what the park should have is a continued line of proper railings topped with forged Historic Finials. Rather than the current status quo, which is a smattering of Historic Finials, modern stuff, and chicken wire. Only this will cost £26,700, and the council, given the urgent call on its budget from other deserving causes, non-railing related, has declined to stump up.

Harriet leans back.

All at once, Harriet falls back through the Chippendale chair. Or rather, the back of the chair snaps, with a dreadful cracking noise, and Harriet falls off it, backwards through empty air, onto the floor. There is a horrified silence from the Association. Shattered pieces of curved antique wood lie on the carpet, like dismantled treble clefs. Harriet lies on the floor, her skirt up above her knees.

Eventually, someone speaks.

“Well, I’d say that chair is totally fucked,” says Larry, through a badly disguised snort.

“Will you shut up,” hisses Tracey, elbowing him. “Oh, Harriet, gosh, can we help you?”

But Anya, the au pair, is already there, helping Harriet up, a calm arm under her elbow.

Harriet looks at the assembled group blearily, as if she has just burrowed out from under the carpet. Her face is burning.

“I am so sorry,” she says. She gives Jay a deadly look. “We never normally sit on these chairs, do we darling?”

She doesn’t know where to exist. Her back and bottom are hurting, but they might as well belong to someone else. She doesn’t want to take responsiblity for her body at the moment, to rub it, to care for it. She wants to leave it and the meeting and the room. She wants to sink down into the ground. Or fly out of the window. She leans on a sidetable, with what she hopes is a publicly rueful expression.

Jay is quietly gathering together the splintered back of the chair, putting the pieces on its embroidered, dusty pink seat, carrying the whole thing out of the room and putting it in the hall, where it will stay, like a child who has let everyone down and must be sent out to sit on the naughty step.

Just where everyone will pass it on the way out, thinks Harriet. And remember how bloody fat I am.

“Ooof. That was a shock! My arse,” she says loudly and comically, showing that she doesn’t care, as she walks across the room and descends into the soft billows of a sofa. She cannot look at Jane.

Larry comes over to her. She likes Larry, and she likes Tracey, his unthreatening wife. Yes, Tracey is thin, like Jane, but not in an opressively commanding way like Jane, whose thinness makes Harriet feel sad, and greedy. Larry pats her on the knee.

“Are you alright? Wine?”

She’s very grateful he is willing to be alongside her.

“I’m fine. Thanks, I will.”

He walks to the other side of the room, returns with a glass and a plate.

“Canapé?”

How can you offer me something to eat when you all know I am too fat?

“Lovely.”

Larry sits down beside her.

“Shall we continue with the meeting?” says Jay, gently. His previous mood has altered. He is now irritated that Jane thinks so little of his carefully planned agenda that she can send him texts about oral sex during the discussion of it.

“Item 3.4. Railings around the park. We could try a fundraiser. But nobody here has the cash, do we?” says Jay.

“You said it,” snorts Larry. He turns to Harriet. “We are so strapped for cash I’m thinking seriously of selling Belle’s collection of electric guitars. On eBay.” He grins at her.

Harriet is delighted by this. The news that Larry and Tracey have a lack of money, even though he is probably massaging the truth somewhat, after all, they are Lottery winners, but still, floods Harriet’s body with joy. She turns to him, smiling, her undignified collapse momentarily forgotten.

“Oh, really? Are you broke too?”

“Oh, utterly. I never know when I approach an ATM whether it’s going to pay out or not.”

“Same here.”

“Yes. And there’s a new tense game to eating out,” he continues, “namely Will My Card Work?, when the bill arrives.”

“But that’s just the same as us,” says Harriet delightedly. “I never thought. But isn’t Tracey doing brilliantly in Beauty at the moment?”

“Nah,” says Larry. “No money in nails.”

“Oh, poor Tracey,” says Harriet. She is sorry for Tracey and Larry, in one way. In another, she is not. I mean, they must have spent all their winnings on their house, which is capital in another form, surely. And then there are the school fees, and that isn’t obligatory, is it? Anyway, they haven’t got much to throw about. Which shows her own situation isn’t completely of her own making. How can it be, if other people are in the same state?

“So is that it?” says Jay, with reference to the railings. People start to talk about other things.

She starts to relax.

“Jay, could you pass around the canapés?” She’s not going to get up. Her back aches anyway. Her husband moves into action. He brings the plate over to the sofa, proffers it to her as if he is holding out a Frisbee.

“Darling?”

“No, I mustn’t. Come here, though,” she hisses, bringing his ear down to her level.

“When is everyone going? How much more of this is there?”

Jay stands up. “Look, everyone, is that about the evening wrapped up? Is there anything more to discuss? Er, fences, foxes, feral youths?” Everyone laughs.

“Marvellous. So, that’s that. Until the Christmas party, I suppose.”

Harriet waves from the sofa. “Bye, all. Sorry about the furniture acrobatics.”

His mouth full of blini, Larry waves at the assembled party.

“Hang on everyone. I’ve been thinking. Wait a minute!”

Everyone sits back down again.

“Well, you know we need money for these railings, or whatever. And we haven’t got any. So, I was thinking. Why don’t we have a fundraising event this summer? Come on. We could flog all our old stuff, you know, have a posh car boot sale.”

“Like a jumble sale?” says the Single Mother.

“No,” says Larry. “Not at all. More like a circulation of goods. Like they do in Manhattan.”

The mention of New York City has an almost alchemical effect. People start listening. If it’s alright for Manhattan, it’s alright for them.

“A Stoop Sale, they call it,” continues Larry. “Everyone gathers their stuff together, puts it on their front door step. Good stuff, you know, nice things. Then people just go around the place and see what they want. The Square is perfect. We could have drinks and things in the middle. You know, turn it into a real community event, for the railings. It could be good. It could be great!”

“I could have a half price cosmetic sale,” says Tracey.

“How about a cake sale?” says Jane.

“How about a dog show?” says Patrick.

“Yeah, except nobody has dogs, apart from people in the council estate,” whispers Jane, quietly scathing.

“We should get the children involved,” says the Single Mother.

“Absolutely,” says Larry, bustling forward on the sofa. “Very true. Hang the sale. Why don’t we get the children to do something special? You know, a bespoke performance. I know. How about a Talent Show? Get them off their lazy backsides. We all spend so much time and effort on them. This is payback time!”

There is general laughter around the room.

“There are probably enough of them to make a string quintet.”

“An orchestra, more like!”

“What, alongside the dog show? Brilliant!”

More laughter.

“How about a fashion show, does anyone have connections in the fashion world?”

“I think a Talent Show is still the best idea,” says Larry, although it was his idea.

Harriet looks around the room. The notion of a plan has galvinised people to fish for their diaries, tap dates into their phones, checking addresses, dates, chatting eagerly.

The Eastern Bloc au pair comes over.

“Is your back alright now?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Silly. Those chairs! Made for a different world, weren’t they?!”

“Sorry?”

“The chairs,” says Harriet, standing up. “They are about 200 years old. They were constructed, you know, made, for people who were very different from us. Much lighter.”

The au pair smiles at Harriet. In her home city of Lodz, to be fat and well-fed is still a goal. It is also difficult to get furniture made before 1967.

Larry stands up.

“Look, everyone, I’ll send round a list of possible dates, although the end of June looks like the best option. We don’t want to clip the beginning of the summer hols, and you know how early schools break up these days.”

“Well, we’ve probably got until the end of July, term goes on until then,” pipes up the Single Mother.

“No, not for private schools, actually,” smiles Jane.

“Oh,” says the Single Mother.

“We’ll also need lists of who can do what,” continues Larry, breezily. “If it is going to be a Talent Show, then obviously everyone has to think about what talents they have. I mean, ones that can be publicly displayed,” he says, laughing loudly. “And we will need to have a list of people willing to do things like lend chairs, or whatever.”

There is a general noise of contented approval.

“Do we want to involve the vicar?” asks Larry. Nobody says anything.

“Alright, nothing religious,” he says hurriedly. “Do we want to involve Philip and Gilda?” Groans all round. Everyone knows Philip Burrell. ‘Famous in the Sixties, infamous in the Seventies’ is how Larry usually defines him. “A total pain in the arse,” is Patrick’s way of describing Larry. The only actual professional creative in the Square, Philip Burrell is a self-defined artist with a capital A. Determinedly ‘eccentric’, he never surfaces before midday, wears paint-spattered boiler suits and walks ten times around the Square for exercise one way at 3pm, and ten times around the Square the other way the next day at 4pm. Never married, he has however had a string of Bohemian-style lovers through his life, which he is always very proud of, and mentions often. The Tate has infrequently flirted with buying his work, but never actually done so. His current amour is Russian. Gilda wears fairy tutus and ostrich feather boas and considers Philip the world’s greatest artist. Nobody is quite sure what she does, although it was rumoured that she had a live art show in a Mayfair gallery once. Philip has a gallery in Paris and one in Dublin, apparently for ‘tax purposes’.