“Shall I open this?” Lou asked, waving their wine bottle at them. “Or are you in the mood for more fizz?”
She flung open the door of the fridge and pulled out a half-full bottle of Krug.
“A party with booze left over,” Neil said. “Must be getting old.”
“Or more catholic in our tastes,” said Lou with an enigmatic smile. She filled three glasses and handed them round.
Watching her hostess pad around the kitchen, to the strains of John Coltrane, the grimy lino sucking at her bare feet, Sara found herself at once repelled by the squalor and intrigued by Lou’s indifference to it. She wondered what it might be like to live like this – to dress how you pleased and eat when you felt like it, and invite people round on a whim. There was, after all, a certain charm in the larky informality of it all, in stark contrast to Carol’s well-choreographed “pot luck” suppers. Lou cheerfully admitted to being “rubbish” at entertaining. She had once, she said over her shoulder, arms elbow-deep in washing-up water, served undercooked pork to Javier Bardem and given him worms. Once again, Sara found herself at a loss for words.
By the time Gavin bounded into the room, at 8.05, wearing jeans and a creased linen shirt the colour of bluebells, dusk had darkened the windows and Lou had brought about a transformation. She had cleared the table and put a jug of anemones and a squat amber candle on it. Around this centrepiece, she had placed terracotta dishes of olives, anchovies and artichokes, as well as a breadboard with a crusty loaf. All it took was for Gavin to draw the blinds and pour more wine and suddenly the atmosphere was one of gaiety and promise – the room felt like a barge or a gypsy caravan – some ad hoc combination, at any rate, of home and vehicle, in which the four of them were setting out on a journey. Now the informality of their reception felt less like negligence and more like a huge compliment. Gavin caught his wife around the waist and kissed her neck, glugged back most of a glass of wine, changed the music on the stereo and began to cook.
As the candles burned down and the alcohol undid the kinks in the conversation, Sara stopped worrying about her choice of outfit and Neil’s unappealing habit of sucking the olive juice off his fingers, and started to enjoy herself. The tone of the evening became relaxed and confessional. She heard herself admit, with a careless giggle that she’d been intimidated when Gav and Lou had first moved in.
“By us?” Lou looked askance. “Why on earth…?”
“Oh, you know – the car you drive, the way you dress…” Sara said, “… the stag’s head above your fireplace!”
“That’s Beryl,” replied Lou, dismissively, “no one could be intimidated by Beryl. She’s cross-eyed and she’s got mange on one antler. As for the Humber, I can’t even remember how we ended up with that…”
“Damien was getting rid of it,” Gav reminded her, “and we were feeling flush...”
“That’s right!” said Lou, “because you’d just won the Tennent’s Sculpture Prize. So you see, pretty random really. Anyway, Madam,” she said, leaning forward in her seat and fixed Sara with a gimlet eye, “it cuts both ways, let me tell you. That day you first spoke to me, remember?” Sara did. “I was a nervous wreck!” Lou glanced at Neil and Gavin, as if for affirmation. “There she was, all colour-co-ordinated and spiffy from the school run, and me looking like shit in my filthy work clothes and, what’s her name? Carol, watching me like a hawk from across the road. I felt like I was auditioning for something. And then you invited me round for a drink and I was, like, yesss!”
Sara didn’t know what to do with this information. She blushed with pleasure and pushed a crumb around the table with her forefinger.
“Well,” said Gav huffily, “if no one’s going to tell me how fucking marvellous I am, I suppose I’d better serve the dinner.”
They laughed. He had a knack for putting people at their ease, Sara had noticed. She’d imagined an artist to be the tortured, introverted type but Gav was neither. You couldn’t call him charming, quite, because there was no magic about it, no artifice. He was just easy in his skin and made you easier in yours. He pottered about the kitchen, humming under his breath, pausing occasionally to toss some remark over his shoulder, and then served up a fragrant lamb tagine as casually as if it were beans on toast. When at last he sat down, he didn’t hold forth about himself or his opinions, but quizzed Neil about his work, with every appearance of genuine curiosity.
“I just think it’s great how you guys give back,” Gav said, shaking his head with admiration.
“Oh, I’m no Mother Teresa…” Neil protested, through a mouthful of food. “It’s important work, don’t get me wrong, and I believe in it one hundred per cent, but they pay me pretty well. And if you heard the grief I get from some of the anarchists on the tenants’ associations, you’d think I was bloody Rachman…”
“Rachman?” Lou skewered a piece of lamb on her fork and looked up, inquiringly.
“He was a notorious private landlord in the fifties,” Neil explained, “became a byword for slum housing and corruption. I did my PhD on how he influenced the law on multiple occupancy. It was fascinating actually.”
“Neil, you can’t say your own PhD was fascinating,” Sara murmured.
“I meant doing it was fascinating.”
“So you’re Doctor Neil,” Gav said. “Very impressive. I can’t imagine having the staying power for something like that.”
“It was a bit of a slog,” Neil conceded. “Then again, I don’t suppose you leaped fully-formed from your mother’s womb wielding a paintbrush…?”
“Too true mate, and if my mother had had anything to do with it, I’d have leapt out with a brickie’s hod instead.”
He put on a broad Lancashire accent, “‘Learn a trade, our Gavin, if you want to put food on’t table.’”
“But you do put food on the table, as an artist,” said Sara. “Surely your parents must be proud of that?”
“What do you reckon, Lou?” He turned to his wife with a rueful smile. “Are they proud?”
“We wouldn’t know, would we?” said Lou coldly.
“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