The Square (5 page)

“Well, we should ASK them,” says Jane scornfully. “They won’t come, you know. Because they are Proper Artists. This is just amateur stuff. They’ll look down their noses at us.”

“Well, let them. They’re harmless,” says Larry. This is his default position on most people, unless they are known supporters of the Labour Party.

“But remember, it has to be good. We have to raise money, you know. I think a Talent Show is the best idea. I know, it was my idea, but still.”

Everyone laughs. They’re a pretty talented bunch, after all, are they not? And their children certainly are.

It is time for the evening to draw to a close.

Harriet, confident now, approaches Tracey.

“I have to go to this event at the Book Fair tomorrow,” she says, as Tracey waits for Anya to join them.

“Are you free? Shall we go together? If you want, I’ll collect you at 6.30. I won’t tell you what it is, but I think you’ll really like it.”

Tracey nods, enjoying the feeling of being organised. “Alright, Harriet, thanks.”

Jay is putting on Jane’s coat for her in the hall. She stands patiently, preening herself under the attention. The detritus of the chair lies behind them on the stairs.

“You could organise it, ” he says. “You could present it, honestly. You’re a natural at this sort of thing. And George could give us all a recital on the piano.”

“What, wheel the Blüthner out into the Square? I don’t think so!”

“Well, get an electronic keyboard.”

She smiles at him, thinking about showing off her son.

“How thoughtful you are,” she says, revealing dimples Jay has never noticed before.

Jay rolls his eyes at her.

“You are adorable. And very naughty. That text.”

Jane smiles proudly, steps out of the house, following her husband across the Square to her house. Turning men on in her mid-forties. She has it, she has to admit to herself. Whatever it is, she has it.

She looks up at the houses around her. Their long rectangular windows present an ordered pattern. Each has two window panes above two window panes, like a maths lesson. The repetition is severe and uncompromising. She tosses her head, pleasuring in the way the glossy weight of her hair takes a split second longer to follow the movement.

The living room in Jay and Harriet’s house is empty. Jay is in the shower-room toilet, thinking about when Jane will be kneeling on the terracotta tiles before him with her head thrown back. Down in the kitchen, Harriet is polishing off the plate of smoked salmon blinis and wonders whether she could allow herself a cigarette. After a minute or so, she decides she will.

Chapter Four Philip

At No. 12, the Square, Philip Burrell stands, naked in front of his window. He is confident that nobody can see him, but what if they could? It’s not illegal, is it? To stand privately in front of your window and look at nature? Philip Burrell is sixty-eight. He flexes his wrinkled buttocks and takes a Full Warrior yoga stance, looking down with pleasure at his still elastic thigh muscles. He notes his penis dangling between his legs. A fine warrior. Still pretty much of a beast, considering.

He stands tall again. His eye falls on the cherry trees opposite his house. He can’t bear the cherry trees, at least for eleven months out of twelve. Weedy things. Not at all like the magnificent London plane. ‘Lollipop trees’ he calls them, dismissively. They have taken over the city, and he rails against it.

There is only one time he will accept their existence and that is during their blossoming period. That is the moment. He loves it when they are covered with creamy flowers.

This morning, however, he looks at them ruefully. The trees are not full of blossom. They are covered with rather ugly red leaves. Small birds hop about in them, searching for insects. He wanders over to his dressing room and reaches for his towelling robe. He always spends the morning naked but for his towelling robe. It is one of his habits.

“Habit,” Philip has a tendency to say, “releases my mind into another place. All of the great aesthetes throughout history were creatures of habit.”

He enjoys the habitual goings on in the Square too; the trees, blossoming at the right time, birds, flowers springing up in the central garden. He likes the parallel human regularity. The bin men on a Wednesday. That piano teacher, turning up like clockwork for her pupils in various houses during the week. The men from the council, weeding the beds. They almost feel like characters in a drama. Philip performs the Tree stance before his window, standing on one leg, feeling almost at one with the actual trees in the Square, and then as he sees Tracey leave her house with her young daughter, he brings his foot down from his thigh and watches her. He finds Tracey quite alluring. All those tarty outfits she wears. He likes it. Likes seeing her exposed thigh and shoulder. She’s the one who won the Lottery a few years back, he thinks. Not a silly amount of money, but enough money to buy a house here. She’s not the sort of person who would usually live here. Shows, too. You can see she isn’t used to having money. At least, she’s the only woman in the Square who dresses like a bitch on heat. He knows she has a husband, that Larry chap who is always laughing, no wonder. He won the fucking Lottery, didn’t he?

Nevertheless, Philip still wonders vaguely if she might allow him to fuck her, whether she would be repulsed, think he was too old. Maybe not. Women behave differently around artists. He discovered this to his great pleasure several decades ago. Ask them to take their clothes off and they are only too happy to oblige. Not that he does life drawing, or nude portraits any more, Christ no. But he is a famous artist. And he is quite confident that normal rules don’t apply. He considers Tracey again. Well, maybe some day.

He turns lightly, heading downstairs to the knock-through kitchen, where he knows Gilda will have his tray ready for him. Coffee and a sliced mango. Philip will never let anything touch his lips but coffee and fruit until midday.

Outside, Tracey is holding the rear car door open for her daughter.

“Twelve times twelve,” says Tracey to Grace.

There is a pause.

“Well?”

“Is it 112?” suggests Grace.

Tracey smiles. She holds her small daughter’s hand.

“No, not quite. Bit more. 144.”

“Do we HAVE to do this?” asks Grace. “Mummy?”

“No,” says Tracey with relief. “No, we don’t.”

She never enjoyed doing times tables herself. She does like taking Grace to school, however. Three more years. Then she’ll be at Secondary, like Belle, at which point Grace will be lost to her. That will be it. No more daily journeys to and from the school gates with conversations about the intricate details of Grace’s day, about who has fallen out with whom and where her library card is. Taking her daughter to school makes her feel connected with the rest of the place, with the High Street and the library and the swimming pool. If you just drove in and out of the Square all day to deliver your child to The Prep, which is ferociously exclusive and expensive, you would feel as if life was a sort of planet of plenty, thinks Tracey, who knows full well from her clients who buy cosmetics from her that it is not.

Today, however, they are driving. Grace hops in, hand on her head to steady the boater. For some reason the children at The Prep have to attend school as if life was stuck in the 1950s; the girls uniform consists of grey pinafore, long black socks, boater with black ribbon.

“Put your seat belt on,” she says.

Tracey gets in the front, pulls her skirt down towards her knees. She hopes she’ll be early. Then she won’t have to run the beady eyed gauntlet of the school gates. All those women with husbands who work in the City, dressed in their silk shifts and tweedy jackets, makeup so subtle it looks like it’s not even there, hair beautifully blown. It is the handbags which are the signifiers, though. Soft, buttery leather bags. Purple and green and black, with clinking accoutrements to announce their presence; silver locks and heart-shaped key fobs and gilt chains, and huge stitched handles which fit just so under your arm. They possess a sort of magical charm. Tracey fears she will never exude such magic. Even though she and Larry had got enough cash, just, to buy their way into the Square, she still feels as she feels most days, like a fraud.

She wishes Larry worked at Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch, or any one of those places which seemed to carry people off into environs of untold wealth. She could never admit to the women at the school gates exactly what her husband did. Or what she did. Imagine. Admitting to flogging cosmetics. It made her stomach quail to even think about it. No, she usually just dropped Grace off and stayed in the 4x4, waving madly as her child turned into the enclave of privilege for the day in her grey pinafore.

She looks in the mirror, sees Grace’s merry little face under the brim of her hat.

“I like your hair today, Mummy.”

Tracey’s insides melt with love for the child. “Thank you very much.”

As she signals left to turn into The Prep’s private road, two miles away Philip Burrell is putting a forkful of melon into his mouth while he considers whether Tracey would allow him to lift her skirt up one morning.

Gilda watches him anxiously.

“Do you think that is ripe enough?”

“Darling it is ravishing,” says Philip in his low, sonorous voice. “As are you.”

Gilda smiles, looks down. Her eyelids shimmer like butterfly wings. She glances up at Philip through a haze of black filament. She is wearing false eyelashes. On the top of her head is a tiny, winking tiara. Gilda usually dresses up, but this is quite a lot for a weekday morning, even by her standards.

Philip raises one bushy eyebrow. He has no hair on his head, but quite a lot of it on his face.

“On behalf of Magnus,” she says by way of explanation for her glamour.

Magnus is Philip’s dealer, a beefy man with no wife but a calculator for a brain. He is the link between Philip’s overseas galleries, and his studio here at his London home. Ask him the percentage of anything; VAT in Singapore, Capital Gains Tax in France, death duties in the States, he will work it out in a split second. Magnus can juggle figures with dizzying skill and speed, and does so for great effect. Particularly when closing a deal.

“I’ll knock the VAT off,” he tells a hesitating customer. “That will save you £23,000. Done?”

Philip marvels at how he does it. He marvels in particular at how Magnus has carried Philip with him, year after year, taking pieces all around the world, selling, selling, always selling and always closing. Much to Philip’s pleasure. He knows his dealer makes 50% from every deal, but as long as the figures are high, Philip doesn’t much care whether Magnus takes a big lump, or not. Actually, he’d rather he did. Keeps him on his toes. And the figures are high. Philip has never earned so much money in his life. In fact, he now earns so much from his art that he can almost laugh at the notion, once his closely guarded ambition, of being an impoverished artist who had a work of art in the Tate collection.

“Ah, yes, of course. Is Magnus coming for lunch?”

“Had you forgotten?”

He had, but no matter. He would be dressed by then, and ready for lunch. Whether Magnus was there or not was immaterial.

He should, however, see what Magnus thought of his latest idea.

“I’ll be in the studio for the rest of the morning. Treasure? Lunch? Can you organise lunch? We will have the usual.”

“Of course.”

The usual was a rough loaf of artisan bread. Salted Napoleon butter. Brie. Grapes. Vine tomatoes. Wine. Perrier.

Philip enjoyed lunch. He would sip Perrier and dab at his mouth fastidiously with a red-checked napkin, almost as if he was on one of the foothills of the Pyranees. In a Renoir film.

He gets up from the table, pushes his plates towards Gilda.

“Delectable. And delicious.
Comme vous.”

“Oh, you are calling me
vous
this morning, cherie,” she says playfully, batting her lids fronded with long nylon strands.

“Well, I see no reason why we should not be formal, at times, with one another.”

She loved him when he was like this, play-acting.

“Go on, arsehole.”

They also loved being rude to one another.

He raises another bushy eyebrow and walks towards the studio, swishing his robe.

Flick. The long row of halogen lights leaps into brilliance.

The studio is white. White walls. White floor. White frosted window, so nobody can see in. Long white trestle tables are set out along the space, which is on the ground floor of the house. The rooms everyone else on the Square has as their formal sitting rooms, Philip uses as his studio. He likes that, feels it to be revolutionary.

“Stupid arses,” he is wont to say. “With their fancy cushions and their bloody pianos. Whereas I have a workshop in my house. A workshop!”

This is where Philip makes his sculptures.

Philip Burrell makes simulacra of holes on famous golf courses around the world.

“Everyone has their favourites,” he would tell people curious to know exactly what he is sculpting.

“Everyone has their particular hole. Whether in Augusta, or Hoylake, or Wimbledon Park. They show me what it is. I look it up on the internet. Then I recreate it for them. Sometimes I put a box underneath it. Sometimes I put it in a frame. Once I had one on wheels.”

Each golf hole is perfectly recreated in wood and clay and chicken wire. Each bump and hollow and bunker, built and painted with painstaking care, right down to the tiny pin in the middle bearing a minute triangular red flag. Sometimes there are tiny trees around the edge. Occasionally, a water feature. Philip is very glad that, firstly, he was so good at Lego as a child, and secondly, that golf is such a bloody global obsession. Oh my goodness, when the Chinese discovered the joys of golf, and came into money, that was a big moment for him. He made at least a million in one year, on the Chinese golf market alone. Alone!

Along the trestle tables are golf holes of various degrees of complexity and in varying stages of completion. He has an assistant, a rough lad who comes in and helps him with the initial pieces, does the sawing and the sanding, but that is simply to help with the workload.