An Irresponsible Age. Lavinia Greenlaw

chattered all the way to the new DIY warehouse on the Old Kent Road, promised she knew what she was doing and ran up and down aisles collecting everything she could think of which would block out the wall and his voice. Chipboard, brackets, rawl plugs, screws, batting, primer, undercoat, matt white gloss, large and small brushes, and a new drill. She had a drill at home but Fred had broken it trying to engrave his and Caroline’s initials into a vaguely heart-shaped piece of slate. Tania insisted on buying a face mask and gloves for Juliet, as well as an apron because the teenagers and pensioners who worked in the store all wore one. Juliet said thank you but intended to put it straight in the bin.

      ‘We should warn Jacob that there’ll be some noise,’ said Tania as she drove them back to the gallery.

      ‘Jacob?’ Juliet could not admit that she knew who he was.

      ‘I’m so sorry, have I not introduced you yet? I’ve been rather caught up. Jacob Dart.’

      ‘Jacob Dart?’

      ‘You know, who wrote Foucault’s Egg.’

      ‘Oh.’ Someone had given Juliet a copy and for a while she had meant to read it. Somehow, she had forgotten the name of the person who wrote it.

      ‘He needed a place to work, at least that’s what he said.’

      Juliet kept quiet so as to encourage her to go on.

      ‘Barbara and I have known each other for years. I know them both, which is why I offered Jacob the room. How was I to know he’d use it as a bolt-hole?’

      Tania swung her venerable French car off the main road, and nudged and bumped her way through the back-streets to the gallery. When a fender scraped against a wall, Juliet made a sound of dismay but Tania did not flinch.

      ‘I’ll take you round to meet him.’

      ‘No!’ Juliet was too emphatic.

      Tania smiled, to show that she found this reticence charming. ‘He won’t bite.’

      ‘No, it’s just that I’d prefer …’ Prefer what? ‘I’d prefer to introduce myself.’

      Tania chose to appear as if she understood.

      

      Juliet knew what she was doing. She had selected the bit, a masonry bit, according to the size of the rawl plugs. All it needed now was decisiveness and heft, and then she would have the shelves up and so full of files and books that she need never hear him again. She placed the tip of the bit against a pencil mark (one of three) and leant into the drill as she pressed its control switch fully down. The bit ground and then burst through the plasterboard too easily, right up to its neck.

      ‘Jesus Christ.’ Juliet yanked the drill back but it caught and swung round, enlarging the hole. She turned it off and put her eye to the wall. ‘Fuck.’ She could see light on the other side. ‘God. Fuck. Christ.’

      Juliet could not stand her first meeting with him to be in order to give an apology so she wrote a note, ‘Sorry. Wall crap. Will fill’, rolled it tightly and prodded it through the hole. After ten minutes or so, a note came back. ‘Don’t worry and don’t fill. What did you mean “Dog muck nice”?’ God. Fuck. Christ. It made her laugh out loud and she dashed off a reply: ‘Why don’t you listen? I said “Rugs pack lice.”’

      This continued for a week.

      ‘Why so rude on the phone?’

      ‘Because I prefer it stewed on the bone.’

      ‘Too many “Why me?”s, too many “Thank you”s.’

      ‘I must be more careful. Can you really catch diseases from bankers?’

      On the day of the opening, he sent a note which said ‘Your singing gave me a fright,’ and before she knew what she was doing, she had written back, ‘What do you mean not coming tonight?’ God. Fuck. Christ. She screwed up her reply and threw it into the bin, looked at it for a while, then screwed it up some more and pushed it down to the bottom.

       FOUR

      Juliet decided that most of the women at the opening were variations on Tania. Like her, they had vague features defined by bright lipstick and characterful glasses, and wore detailed clothes in strong muted colours such as mustard and plum. Their shoes were ill-fitting and overly eccentric. There were others who wore black and grey, and did not use their hands when they talked. They varied from slender to statuesque but always along straight lines – like Juliet.

      She shoved her way into one knot of people after another, elbowing and grumbling and thrusting out a tray of drinks, and was hovering crossly by a group who had not noticed her when she nudged someone’s back with her tray so that he turned and the group parted and she came face to face with the person they had been listening to. This woman was taller, fairer, heavier and maybe ten years older than Juliet, who instantly thought of her as someone to be admired.

      The woman kept talking as she took a drink. Her hair was a blend of silver, ash and sand, and her clothes were an equally technical combination of kingfisher and cobalt blue. She wore jade leather boots and a cashmere shawl in the babiest of blues round her shoulders. Her eyes were dolly blue and her face had an expensive liquid finish. Her voice was avid and cool. She did not look at Juliet or say thank you, nor did she pay any attention to her audience but peered beyond them. Just as Juliet turned away, the woman craned forward and seemed to grow and to soften, and then her over-stretched smile collapsed into a small ‘o’.

      ‘Oh,’ said Barbara as she realised that the person at whom Jacob was directing the full force of a smile she had not seen for years was not as she had thought for a moment herself, but someone standing between them. The plain thing handing round the drinks. Boyish, cropped and scrubbed, with the virtue in Jacob’s eyes of not being one of the grown-ups. ‘Oh.’

      Juliet, who had seen none of this, was looking for another group to interrupt when a hand landed on her shoulder and a mouth brushed her ear. ‘You are so rude.’

      Juliet put the tray down on the floor and reached up to embrace her brother. ‘Have a drink, Carlo. Thank you so much for coming. Fred’s buggered off to some banker’s do. Have six.’

      ‘I’ll have two. A green and a blue?’

      ‘Good choice. The pink’s dreadful.’

      ‘Come outside for a smoke.’ Juliet grabbed the hem of Carlo’s jacket and leaving the tray on the floor, led him towards the back door.

      ‘Do you have to stick around all night?’ he asked.

      ‘I’m not going to.’

      ‘The Natural Fringe are playing at The Glory Hole. We could walk over and give them a bit of an audience.’

      ‘Double family duty for you tonight then.’

      They were about to go back inside to get more drinks when a man approached and asked for a light.

      ‘Sure.’ Carlo pulled out a box of matches and began to strike one after the other into the man’s cupped hand. They would not stay alight. ‘Sorry.’

      The man shrugged and dropped his cigarette. ‘Never mind.’ He did not walk on but stood there, smiling at Juliet.

      ‘Hello,’ said Juliet.

      ‘Hullo,’ he replied. ‘Hullo, you.’

      Even after Juliet had explained to Carlo about the wall, and how they had to listen to each other all day but had never before met (not mentioning the notes), and Carlo had laughed and introduced himself (‘The big little brother!’), and everyone had run out of things to say, Jacob made no move to leave them.

      ‘What do you think of the show?’ he asked.

      Juliet had spent days helping to hang