The People at Number 9

“Lou gets very indignant on my behalf. The truth is they don’t really get it. If I was a doctor or a lawyer, I’m sure they’d be pleased, but my mum’s idea of art’s a herd of horses galloping through surf, so…”

“She knows you’ve done well,” Lou muttered, “wouldn’t kill her to say so.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Gav said, shrugging. “I always played second fiddle to our Paula, anyway.”

“Is that your sister?” asked Sara. “What does she do?”

“She’s just a primary-school teacher,” Lou interjected, “but to hear Gav’s mum, you’d think she walked on water.” She mimicked her mother-in-law with unsparing sarcasm: “‘Our Paula’s doing an assembly on multiculturalism, Gavin. Our Paula’s taking the kids to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.’ No mention of the fact that Gav’s got a piece in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Never occurs to her that she might actually stop playing online bingo for two minutes and go and have a look herself.”

“Lulu,” Gavin put a hand on her arm, “it’s no big deal.”

Lou’s eyes were glittering.

“That does seem a bit unfair,” said Sara, doubtfully.

“Not really.” Gavin shrugged. “I mean, artists aren’t very useful, are we? People don’t actually need art.”

“God Gavin,” Lou fumed, “I hate it when you put yourself down. You’re an important contemporary artist, represented by a top gallery.”

“I know,” Gavin laughed, “and I never stop wondering when they’re going to rumble me.”

“What do you mean?” Neil asked.

“Well honestly, what is it I do? Just muck about really, like those kids our Paula teaches. I just haul my guts up in three dimensions; I play around with bits of old rubbish until they start to look like the things I fear or loathe or love and then I put them out there and amazingly, people seem to get it.”

“Some people,” said Lou.

“Well,” said Neil, draining his wineglass and placing it decisively back down on the table. “Sara’s too shy to ask, so I will. When are we going to get a look at your studio?”

“Neil!” Sara turned to him indignantly.

“Haven’t you seen it yet?” Gavin seemed surprised. “Oh no, you haven’t, have you? That was Stephan and Yuki. Come on then!”

He slapped his thighs and stood up. So much for their banter last evening, Sara thought – the Chelsea oligarchs long forgotten. Nevertheless, she couldn’t quell a fluttering in her stomach as she rose, unsteadily, to follow him. She only wished she were feeling her bright, articulate best, instead of fuzzy with drink. As she wove her way towards the spiral staircase which led to the studio, she tried to recall some of the aperçus she had read when she’d googled his latest show, but the only phrase that sprang to mind was “spastic formalism”, and she couldn’t see that tripping off her tongue. Lou dried her hands on a tea towel and moved to join them, but Gav turned to her with a look of pained regret.

“Do you think maybe one of us should stay up here in case Zuley wakes up?”

“Oh…okay,” Lou gave him a tight little smile and turned away. Sara struggled to shake off the feeling that she had somehow usurped her friend, but that was silly – Lou must be up and down these stairs all the time, she would hardly wait on an invitation from her own husband.

Her qualms were quickly overtaken by astonishment and fascination when they emerged, not into the picturesque, messy studio of her imagination but into a stark, brightly lit space more reminiscent of a morgue. She could see at a glance that a lot of money had been spent here. There were the specialist tungsten light fittings, the open drains running down each side of the concrete floor, the coiled, wall-mounted hose and gleaming stainless-steel sinks. There were rolls of mesh, and rows of white-stained buckets, and in the centre of the room a large zinc workbench, on which lay the only evidence of what you might call, if you were feeling generous, creative endeavour. Sara edged forward to get a closer look. She could see what appeared to be a rudimentary human form made out of wire mesh, which protruded here and there through a slapdash layer of fibrous plaster. It reminded her, both in its diminutive size – about two-thirds that of an actual human, and its tortured attitude – of the writhing, petrified bodies she had seen in the ruins of Pompeii.

“Gosh!” she said.

“I suppose this is a work in progress?” said Neil hopefully.

Gavin smirked.

“And if I told you it’s the finished article?”

“I’d say I don’t know much about art, but I know when someone’s taking the piss,” said Neil affably. Sara darted him an anxious glance, but Gavin was laughing.

“You’d be right,” he said. “Come and have a look at this.”

He led them through a swing door, into a space three times the size of the first room. Neil emitted a low whistle.

“What I can’t get over,” he said afterwards, as they sat up in bed, discussing their new friends with the enthusiasm of two anthropologists who have stumbled on a lost tribe, “is the scale of it. I mean, I knew it had to be big – all the earthworks; the noise – but I didn’t realise it would be that big. The plumbing alone must have cost…” He closed one eye, but bricks and mortar was his specialist subject and it didn’t take him long, “… four or five K and they must need a mother of a transformer for those lights. I’m glad I’m not paying the bills.”

“I know,” said Sara, “but what gets me is the contrast. That really practical work-space and then you see the end-product and it’s so moving, so human.”

“Right,” said Neil doubtfully.

“Didn’t you like it?”

“No, I did. It’s just… I didn’t get why… he’s obviously a consummate craftsman … and yet on some of them the finishing looked quite rough and ready.”

“Oh I think that’s deliberate,” said Sara, “because others were really meticulous, really anal. And I think the ones covered with the mirror mosaic-y things were meant to be sort of fractured and damaged in a way. Don’t you think?”

Neil shrugged.

“Beats me,” he said, “but you’ve got to take your hat off to him. The nerve. The confidence. To take on a mortgage like they must have, knowing you’ve got four dependants…”

“Lou works,” Sara objected.

“Yeah, in film,” he said. “And then to blow a ton of money kitting out the studio like it’s a private hospital, and all for…” he shrugged “… something so particular, so rarefied. I mean, how does he know people are going to get it?”

“Oh people get it,” said Sara, “I’ve looked him up online. He’s in the top fifty most collectable living artists.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Neil said, “I admired it. I’m just not sure I understood it.”

“Oh I did…” Sara said. She took a deep breath “… I definitely think he’s obsessed with mortality. And then I think there’s quite a lot about the sacred and the profane. I mean the writhing, emaciated ones – I think must be referencing Auschwitz or something, and then you’ve got the ones with the wings – they’re angels, obviously – but maybe fallen angels because there’s a sordidness about them, a sense of shame. My favourite – the one that really spoke to me – was that one with all the tiny toys stuck to it and whitewashed over, did you see that? It looked kind of diseased until you got up close and saw what they really were. That, to me, was about childhood, about how we’re all formed and scarred by our early experiences. I think he’s actually very courageous.”

“Ok-a-ay,” said Neil.

5 (#ulink_60dee9b5-8f7b-5a73-bede-d3d09bd65bf5)

It was the start of the autumn term and Sara had promised to show Gavin the ropes. The school run was his thing, apparently. Over the course of the summer, they had forged a firm rapport, yet finding him on her doorstep bright and early this crisp September morning, she found herself unaccountably tongue-tied.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s not raining, is it?” Gavin frowned, held out his hand and scanned the cloudless sky.

“I think we’re okay.”

Sara ushered Patrick and Caleb out of the door, fussing unnecessarily over their lunchboxes and book bags to cover her awkwardness, then fell into step with Zuley’s buggy.

The day might have been warm, but the street was done with summer. The privet hedges were laced with dust and the trees held onto their leaves with an air of reluctance. The long grass in front of the council flats had snagged various items of litter. Here and there a car roof box, as yet un-dismantled, recalled the heady days of August in Carcassonne or Cornwall, but for the commuters hurrying by, earphones in, heads down, the holidays were ancient history.

Only Gavin, in his canvas shorts and flip-flops still seemed to inhabit the earlier season. Sara stole occasional glances at him as he strode along. She liked the way he gave the buggy an extra hard shove every few steps to make Zuley laugh, the way he gave his sons the latitude to surge fearlessly ahead, but pulled them up short with a word when they got out of hand. He might not spend that much time around his children, she thought, but he was a good parent when he did; a better one, probably, than Lou. To the casual observer he could be any old self-employed Dad – a web designer or a journalist. She hugged to herself the knowledge of his exceptionalness.

“So you didn’t get away in the end?” he said. “That’s a pity.”