Authors: Raffaella Barker
Green Grass
For Roman with love from Mum
This is not a novel, it's an installation
Also Available by Raffaella Barker
âCan you balance a spoon on your nose?'
Laura is grateful that Inigo does not demonstrate spoon balancing, but instead contents himself with arranging all the glasses and cutlery on the table into a gleaming circuit, with fork following knife following spoon, each one balanced on the rim of a glass.
âEverything has a point from which it can balance. The trick is finding it.' Inigo pushes back the sleeves of his shirt. His watch glitters and beeps, becoming a green screen for a second. He flexes his fingers and balances a cigarette packet on one corner, then flashes a grin at his audience. Laura has of course seen it all before, but she knows better than to roll her eyes and sigh; instead she beckons the circling waitress and whispers instructions. Manfred, an art collector who flew in this evening from Munich to dine with Laura and Inigo, claps his hands and laughs out loud.
âWhat a talent. What a talent,' he chortles, slapping
Inigo on the back with a broad, well-manicured hand. Inigo, lost in contemplation of the menu, is caught off balance and lurches towards Laura. The apparently floating tableware crashes down, spilling water onto Manfred's soft black trousers and into his shoes. The flurry of napkins, the apologies and jangle of steel against glass and china goes unremarked in the roaring chatter and bustle of the restaurant. Laura takes a deep breath and exhales at length to stop herself saying something foul to Inigo. It is important to be supportive, she reminds herself, and anyway, there's no point in getting het up about his table arranging.
Unperturbed, Inigo pushes back his cuffs again with a big-armed gesture and begins to rebalance his place setting. A thin blade of a man slides into the fourth seat at the table, kissing Laura's cheek, winking at Inigo and shaking hands with Manfred, all in one smooth elision of movement and greeting.
âManfred, it's good to see you again. Laura, Inigo, I'm sorry to keep you all waiting. Can I get any of you a drink or have you ordered a bottle?'
âYou didn't keep us waiting, we were fine and we've ordered some wine.' On this occasion Laura can't quite suppress the bubble of irritation which blows up in her chest whenever she sees Jack Smack, Inigo's agent. Most of the time she has it well under
control, and can meet his oily gaze with serenity, but this evening she is tense and tired, and determined to puncture the smug slickness of his arrival.
âManfred wants to know more about Inigo's working methods,' she says untruthfully to Jack, who is painstakingly removing a fork and a knife from the suspension bridge Inigo has remade. âWhy don't you bring him along to the studio tomorrow morning, at about eleven, and we can show him something more substantial than these dinner tricks before he has to catch his plane?'
She smiles, her eyes demure, her hands folded in her lap. She knows that Jack is having a little more of his hair transplant done in the morning because his secretary Jenny told her so, and she can't resist trying to catch him out.
But Jack looks regretful, pours wine and says, âWhat a wonderful idea â let's do it next time. I've already fixed Manfred up to see one of my young Turner Prize candidates for breakfast in a caravan underneath the Westway. They're being filmed for a documentary so we can't really cancel. Sorry, Laura.'
Laura has to bite her bottom lip hard to stop herself saying, âTouché, Jack,' but she is diverted by Inigo leaning over to whisper loudly, âHas Jack always had that scar on his head?'
Manfred and Jack are discussing something dreary:
is it better to fly from Berlin to Gatwick or from Munich to Heathrow? Laura turns towards Inigo, putting her fingers up to his mouth and whispering in his ear, âSssshhhhh! He's halfway through having a hair transplant â haven't you noticed all those tufts that have started to appear? No, don't look now.'
But Inigo, to whom tact is a foreign language and subtlety another country, cranes past her to look, raising an eyebrow so it almost meets his own hairline. Laura presses her fingers on his arm and shoots him a warning look; Inigo is quite capable of asking Jack about the transplant, but instead he squeezes Laura's hand back, and winks at her.
Manfred, watching them, beams approvingly. He likes to see a couple getting on well, and he likes it even more if they are attractive and are sitting with him. Inigo and Laura are striking, and although in a ideal world he would prefer to see a smaller nose on a woman, and perhaps long curly blonde tresses where Laura has an aquiline profile and auburn hair scooped up in a twist, he appreciates her creamy unlined skin, and her neat waist. His eyes linger for a moment on her stomach, or what he can see of it beneath the smooth fabric of her damson red skirt, then he coughs and asks Jack, âDid you say that Laura and Inigo have children? How long have they been married?'
The food arrives, and conversation becomes general, Inigo answering Manfred as he hands him a fork he has inadvertently tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket, presumably to save for a bit of balancing later when the table is cleared.
âYes, we've got two. Twins, in fact. They're called Fred and Dolly. They're thirteen now.' He pauses, fishing for his glasses and putting them on to survey his food. âThey're bastards,' he adds, scrutinising his plate, which must look very off-putting due to the green lenses in his glasses. âI thought I ordered organic mushrooms, but this looks like excrement.' Inigo raises an arm to beckon the waitress.
Manfred looks shocked and cannot think what to say next. Laura places a soothing hand on his arm. âOh honestly, Inigo, you don't have to put it like that, do you? Sorry, Manfred. What he means is that we aren't married.'
Neither Inigo nor Manfred is listening. Both are gazing at Inigo's plate on which ooze some pieces of black slime. The waitress, her hands cupped in apparent supplication, is delivering an earnest lecture on organic methods of mushroom growing.
âWell, I think they do grow them in compost, but I'm sure it's well rotted and comes from completely organic cows, or sheep or whatever manure they use â¦'
âSee? I said it was excrement,' mutters Inigo, lifting his plate up to examine it further.
âFor heaven's sake, man, either eat it or send it back,' Jack interrupts testily, having wolfed half of his vivid red mound of steak tartare and pushed away the plate, indicating his readiness for the removal of this course and the arrival of the next.
âI'm going to eat it, I just want to know what's in it. After all, this place makes a great song and dance about being organic and pure. I bet your beef is untraumatised, so why shouldn't my mushrooms be serene?'
Laura eats her own, delicious salad, wishes she was thin enough for bread as well, and finds her glass is empty again. When Manfred fills it, Laura is faintly aware that this is the third time.
He asks her, âAre you against marriage for any particular reason?'
Bemused for a moment, Laura stares at him, noticing the kind eyes, the large cheeks, the soft fold of his chin dolloping over his stiffened collar. âAgainst marriage? What do you mean? Oh, us,' she laughs, sips her wine, and because Inigo and Jack are talking now, and because she has had two glasses of wine on a stomach empty of all save lettuce, she launches into explanation.
âNo, I'd love to be married in some ways. Someone
asked me once, but that was years ago, before I met Inigo.' She pauses, fiddling with her glass, gazing at nothing; Manfred nods sympathetically. He is having a lovely time looking at Laura's cleavage and hearing about her marriage, or rather her non-marriage. He hadn't planned to buy an Inigo Miller piece â the prices have become absurd â but really, Laura is enchanting. Perhaps there's something with an image of her on it. Or in it. He'll ask Jack to sort it out. It'll cost a bit, but what the hell. Maybe Laura could come along when Inigo instals it. He must make sure it's something big which needs installing. And it had better be fragile, so it will need restoring by the artist. Laura must come to watch the restoration, of course. Mmmm ⦠splendid. Manfred pops a piece of bread in his mouth and chews.
Laura is talking again. âInigo and I had a commitment ceremony in New York. We'd been together a couple of years â longer, maybe â because Fred and Dolly were about two. We were all living in New York. It was fun, but hard work with small children â¦' Laura tails off, lost in memories of dragging her double buggy up endless stairs to the apartment, of putting on and taking off toddler hats and gloves to keep the children from over- or under-heating. She loved her life then.
Manfred coughs gently, drawing Laura back. She smiles apologetically. âOh yes, anyway, the ceremony.
We were all on the roof of the gallery where Inigo was having his show, and he'd put up a huge Möbius strip studded with sequins and it was snowing.'
Manfred raises a hand. âYes, yes,' he beams, âI remember. I have seen a photograph of it in an auction catalogue. It is called
Perfect Moment
. I love that piece.'
Laura sighs, slumping her head on one hand. âWell, it should have been a perfect moment, just Inigo and me and our children and this lovely priest we met out there, but then Inigo and Jack decided that it would make fantastic art so they invited all the critics and a few favoured clients and said it was an exclusive Private View. Inigo took photographs between vows, and released a limited edition of twenty prints. Some are called
Private View
and the others are called
Perfect Moment
, depending on whether the photograph has us kissing or not. They went for a fortune, but I would rather have had my ceremony to myself.'
âBut Laura, my sweet, then I wouldn't have got my forty per cent.' Jack leans across to break up their conversation and Laura, her cheeks suddenly burning from the wine and the memories, pushes her chair back and crosses the restaurant towards the lavatories.
Inigo watches her move between the tables. She catches the heel of her shoe against the leg of someone's chair, stoops to apologise, and continues. Inigo
grins to himself, unconsciously playing with a pen, threading it between his fingers, twirling it around the middle finger then balancing it on its point on his thumb. Laura is like that, so is Fred. At home, Inigo likes clear surfaces on which he can place objects, position them perfectly, move away and come back to look at them. He likes to suspend things â a compass perhaps or an ivory paper-knife, from invisible thread, so the object hovers just above the mantelpiece or the kitchen shelf. His daughter Dolly shares his fascination with the way things are in their space; she too finds it hard to walk past a pile of books or a bowl of fruit without rearranging it. But then Fred or Laura come in and the constructions are doomed. Fred throws a school bag on top of a pyramid of lemons and paperclips on the kitchen table, Laura, searching for her keys, which are never where she thought, elbows a hovering display of glass prisms above the mantelpiece so they swing and tangle in rainbow-lit abandon. It's not intentional; Laura and Fred are simply clumsy. Dolly finds it maddening, but Inigo has endless patience for recreating poise in their wake. Laura, in turn, finds this maddening.