It occurred to Arlo that he hadn’t actually sung it in years. He’d written other stuff since. Not that he sang that much either. And though he knew “Among the Flowers” off by heart he doubted he’d ever sing it out loud again. It was tainted now, charred.
But it was different when he wrote it, over a decade before Rox took it. He liked who he’d been back then. The keenness, the naivety, the energy and optimism for the future: for Life, for the mystery of Love.
Petra Flint.
Blimey.
Now there’s someone he hadn’t thought about for a while.
Arlo glanced around the class as if he’d just spoken out loud, but the boys had their heads down.
‘Finn, stop chewing your shirtsleeve.’
When Rox had first released the song and had nodded their shaggy locks and generally postured in a deep and meaningful way on Top of the Pops, Arlo had briefly wondered about Petra, whether she was watching, whether she’d heard the song, remembered it, remembered him. But there had been so much else on his mind five years ago, he hadn’t had the capacity to dwell on it.
He thought about her now, though. In evening prep. Petra Flint. His unwitting muse and the prettiest girl he’d seen back then; the personification of the song’s subject matter who came into his focus out of nowhere the day that the Noble Savages had performed at her school. Whatever happened to Petra Flint?
‘Nathan, flick one more ink pellet at Troy and you’ll forfeit your next exeat.’
Petra Flint is probably an artist or a housewife, Arlo decided, bringing himself back to the present sharply. And here he was, aged thirty-four, sitting in an oak-panelled study room in a school that was over three hundred years old, presiding over twenty teenage boys who were battling with their homework and tiredness and boredom and their need to be just boys. He looked at them. They looked like a bunch of scraggly terriers who could well do with a noisy belt around the playing fields. He tried to see himself through their eyes. One of the slightly more cool teachers, he reckoned with some satisfaction: his small gold hoop earring, his excitingly varied taste in music, his occasional swearing, the fact that he had a tattoo on his upper arm which the boys had glimpsed but never seen in full, the fact that he called the boys ‘guys’, that he told them, when they asked him, that yes he had done certain drugs at certain times in his life. They’d never asked him about sex, though. They reserved that topic as a dare – preferring to cloak their queries with faked innocence and pose them to female members of staff instead. The cheeky buggers. Or perhaps they didn’t ask him because he didn’t give out that vibe. You can ask Mr Sir Savidge about music and drugs and tattoos because he knows about all that stuff. But don’t ask him about sex because he doesn’t have sex any more.
And if ever they should ask him, what would he say then? That he was celibate from personal choice? And that had been the case for five years? Was that the line he’d spin to Miranda Oates if she kept up her attention? Arlo thought about Miranda Oates with her shapely rear, her nice tits, her penchant for dark lipstick and bare legs, her obvious interest in him. And he wondered if it wasn’t just a bit sad, perhaps a little worrying, that he was thinking of inventive ways to fob her off when once he would quite happily have shagged her, gamely dated her even.
‘That’s the end of that,’ he said, suddenly out loud, and the boys took it to mean the end of prep and scarpered from the room a full five minutes early.
Despite the mercy dash to Whetstone in the small hours, Rob’s meeting with the Japanese had gone well. Petra was very tired after the previous night’s sortie and though most of all she craved an early night, she’d phoned Rob and offered to cook at either her place or his. He suggested she join him in town. Getting ready, she asked herself a couple of times why she was doing something she didn’t want to do, why didn’t she just slob around at home and eat finger food in front of Location Location Location. But she answered herself sharply – her relationship with Rob was just ten months old and there was no time for complacency. Furthermore, Rob seldom invited her to socialize with his work people, though he frequently did. So she should be honoured, she told herself. And she shouldn’t let bloody sleep, or lack of it, dictate her life. She stood in her bedroom in a bath towel and wondered what she could wear that was appropriate for a night on the town with Rob and his cohorts, but would be comfortable. Her grazed knee was still too raw to go plasterless and her blistered heels necessitated backless shoes. But not my Birkenstocks, Petra thought, not on Rob’s big night – he’d be appalled. She decided to wear her slippers because they didn’t look too much like slippers; indeed, people wore a similar style as shoes. A pair of slip-on flat mules in a type of glorified plastic netting decorated with sequins and beads. She’d have to wear socks or tights because she couldn’t very well have her heels on display, with plasters or without. She hated anything drawing attention to herself. Just then, for a moment, she hated herself more for sleepwalking.
‘If I didn’t bloody sleepwalk, I could be tottering about in strappy heels. Not that I own a pair,’ she muttered to herself, slouching in front of the mirror. ‘Pop socks and slippers. For Christ’s sake.’ In the event, her cropped black trousers covered the offending top of the pop socks, and a plain black camisole teamed with a cardigan lightly decorated with beads gave her look a cohesion that pleasantly surprised her. Concealer helped with the bags under her eyes and mascara widened them beyond their weary proportions. On the tube, she congratulated her inventiveness: no one gave her a second look or even registered her choice of footwear.
‘And here is Petra,’ Rob announced as she approached his table at a busy Soho bar, ‘and – dear God – she’s wearing her slippers.’
Though she stood while everyone remained seated, she felt small and mortified. Two of Rob’s male colleagues glanced down at Petra’s feet in fascination, a couple of his female colleagues analysed them with pity, whilst circling their own beautiful footwear.
‘Blisters!’ Petra shrugged, making a lively joke of it.
‘They’re cute,’ one of the girls said lamely.
‘Watch out that none of these louts tread on your tootsies,’ slurred the other.
‘How are you, babe?’ Rob asked, pulling Petra towards him for a boozy kiss, his hand lingering over her buttocks.
‘Fine, fine,’ Petra said, aware that one of the other men was entranced by Rob’s hand on her bottom. There were no spare chairs.
‘You get the next round, darling,’ Rob said, ‘and you can perch on my knee.’
‘You get the drinks in, Rob, you wanker,’ said the woman who had defined Petra’s slippers as cute. ‘Here, your bum is quite small, cop a pew with me.’ And she shuffled to the edge of her chair, making room for Petra.
‘Thanks,’ said Petra. ‘I’m Petra.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m Laura. I work with Rob. We all do – we’re toasting ourselves because the Japs love us.’
‘Cheers,’ said Petra, though she had no glass to raise.
‘Get the girl a drink!’ Laura told Rob who flung his hands up in defeat and made his way to the bar.
‘Oh dear,’ Petra said, trying to look fondly after him, ‘he looks slightly the worse for wear.’
‘All the blokes do, they are all worse for wear,’ the other girl leant across and said, ‘whereas we girls are just pleasantly pissed.’
Petra wondered whether to toast this fact, but not having a drink enabled her to just nod and grin while the other women drained their champagne flutes. She didn’t much care for champagne, or wine bars. She preferred vodka and tonic in friendly pubs. This place was heaving yet echoey and she wasn’t sure whether she liked the milieu, a noisy rabble of suited men and highly well-heeled women bragging and flirting;