Alligator Playground (4 page)

Tom told her he loved Fred and Janice, and Angela laughed at how they behaved with their language and fussed to make him comfortable. He was too busy to go more than twice, but liked to choose their gifts, once sending a box of chocolates so big they joked about roping it to the luggage rack.

On the Great North Road she always stopped for lunch at The George in Stamford. She liked the old fashioned place, because Tom once booked them a room on their way to the Edinburgh Festival. She sat in the lounge afterwards for coffee. Feeling herself to be a woman of mystery and elegance, she surprised herself when, seeing a man come in who she fancied, she wondered whether she would go away with him for the weekend if he asked.

‘Fell off the back of a lorry, did they?’ her father said, seeing the gifts. ‘I hope the police won’t be round in the morning. We don’t want to upset your mother, do we? Do we, Janice?’ he bawled.

‘Don’t be daft,’ her mother said. ‘We should be glad we’ve got such a nice son-in-law.’

Her father grumbled, no gracious corpuscles in his blood. ‘I like to look life in the eye.’ The first time he met Tom he said to Angela on the QT that such a man would end up either as a millionaire or in prison. A real judge of character, but that was his way, and she could never stand being at home for more than seventytwo hours.

The first day was tolerable because she took from her parents all that had been useful in her early life. Not much, but it served, though she was irritated at feeling sentimental about it. People gawped as she walked around the village, wondering what she was up to in the call box by the main road trying to get through to Tom. She strode to the stone-walled fields, and remembered running across them as a kid. Now she wore trousers, and laughed at the fact that she was too tall to graze her crotch anymore.

On the second day in the terraced house the silence was even thicker than the walls she had clambered over, and an effort was needed to stand up and go outside. But after the midday dinner of overcooked lamb, potatoes and cabbage, her father took his jacket from the back of the door and said: ‘Come on, Angie, let’s walk down the road to the pit. The men have been laid off, and the women have set up a protest camp outside gates. You’ll need a scarf and hat, though.’

Maintenance men kept the mine humming so that seams wouldn’t collapse or water pour in. Pits were closing all over the coalfield, he said, but the miners wanted jobs not redundancy money. ‘The government’s playing arsy-versy one minute, and changing its tactics the next, just to unnerve everybody. They treat people like bloody schoolkids.’

Three women were warming themselves at a coalfired brazier, all dressed in various styles of anoraks, rainbow scarves and woolly hats. One young woman sat on a plank between two barrels, helping a young boy to drink out of a titty-bottle filled with warm tea.

An elderly grey-haired woman in a duffel coat, tall and thin, came out of the headquarters caravan. ‘Up from London, are yer?’ she said, when Fred had introduced Angela. ‘My name’s Enid. You don’t talk like us anymore.’

‘I can’t help that, can I?’ The woman had spoken with humour perhaps, but Angela had never liked that kind because whoever used it only wanted to put one over on you. She regretted her sharp tone, and even having opened her mouth.

‘Well, here
we
are,’ Enid went on, ‘doing the only thing we can to mek the buggers see sense. I’m not sure how far we’ll get, though. They’re doing their best to shift us. Last week they set the bulldozers on us, but the drivers refused to do it, bless ’em. The media and TV was here, and the powers that be didn’t like that, so they ’ad to call ’em off.’

A young woman came out of the caravan with mugs of coffee and gave one to Angela. ‘We was at school together, don’t you remember?’ The wind blew the flaps of her headscarf this way and that. ‘We was in Miss Griffin’s class.’

She said yes, now I do, and knew she would have been here as well if she had stayed and married a man whose only hope of work was down the pit – being bossed about by this woman who had set herself up as their leader.

‘The men are used to the work, and get good money,’ Enid said. ‘It’s the only job they can do, and there’s no other. If many more pits close it’ll be a disaster. Even now, all these villages are dying, and the crime rate’s soared. At one time you could go out without locking your door. We used to police the place ourselves, you might say, but nowadays the young lads break in and tek everything. It goes on all the time.’

‘Enid’s one o’ the best,’ her father whispered. ‘None better. The salt o’ the earth.’ Such phrases suggested matiness, and bigotry, yet she listened, asking the right questions, with words and gestures natural to her. Still feeling a fraud, yet knowing they had more of a case than anybody else, she signed the petition, and gave a tenner for the fighting fund.

Enid told her father he had a lovely daughter, and there were tears of pride in his eyes. He held her hand affectionately by the back door, but let it fall as they went in, for fear her mother would see.

On the third day she said she had to go home and look after Tom, and was as happy to get away as the first time, unable to smile till reaching Doncaster and heading south. To have stayed longer might have turned her back into someone she had always had a horror of being, only feeling what she assumed to be her real self when a tea tray was brought to her table at the hotel in Stamford.

Tom was away in Frankfurt again – or was it Bologna – conferring with publishers about translations, reprints and bestsellers. He was all over the place these days, but would shine in tomorrow, merry and bright before burying himself back in the office.

The melancholy notes of Elgar stopped, and Tom’s voice vibrated at her ribs, as if he had been dead a year and was talking from the other side of heaven or hell, if there were such places, which she wouldn’t believe till she had been there and seen for herself. His tone was low-pitched, and eerily confidential in case someone who shouldn’t be was pressing an ear to the other side of the door.

‘Diana? Tom. It’ll be marvellous. Can’t bear to wait. I know. Have to, won’t I? We both will.’ He gave a sneaky laugh, new to Angela. ‘It’ll be worth it, I know.’

She sat in an armchair, and his voice was clearer. Her flesh felt as if coated with ice. Last night she had been to see a play at Notting Hill Gate. He had come in before her, and complained of exhaustion
when she got into bed with nothing on and laid lovingly by him.

‘No, I won’t pick you up. Get a taxi, or a minicab, if you like. All right, a proper black cab. Safer these days. I’ll see you at the check-in. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be there. Who? Norman Bakewell? How did his interview go? Yes, he’s always very good. I’ve never known him not to be, providing he’s interviewed by an attractive woman. You saw him afterwards? What did he say? No, he doesn’t know about us. Nobody does. He
is
a vile old gossip. Angela? Glad to get rid of me, I expect. How do I know what she does? Of course she doesn’t, so don’t get nervous. I must hang up, though. See you at the check-in. You’ve got your ticket and passport?’ Another sneaky laugh. ‘You’d look a right charlie getting there and finding it was out of date. I’ve heard of it happening. Mine? I check it every morning before brushing my teeth. Can’t wait, either, my darling. Love you. Yes, a lot. Love you, then. ’Bye. All right. ’Bye, love.’

No more voice. She knew she should laugh, but her lips wouldn’t untwist. Like an episode from one of Bakewell’s gloating and cynical books. Well, the next chapter would be hers. The heating was on full but her hands and feet were cold. Maybe an unknown voice would come out of the hissing tape with the gen on how to kill herself. Better still if it told her the best way of doing him in without being found out.

She couldn’t think, so neither was likely, head blocked solid till her eyes were sore. At the end of the Elgar she had needed to go into the bathroom and pee, but didn’t want to anymore. When she did she might squat over those lovely bespoke frilly fronted shirts he was fond of poncing around in.

Diana, he had called her. ‘Diana,’ she said aloud, ‘I’ll fucking Diana her. I’ll dish him, as well. I’ll make the bastards spit tacks.’ The only time he had shed tears was once when she asked him to peel some onions before a dinner party.

T
OM TOOK INTO
account only the surface features of life, and never went properly into the depths to try and make sense of the turmoil, and bring it under some form of control. In any case, to imagine it would be beneficial or worthwhile or – more important – costeffective, was futile. Wasn’t the dazzle of the surface more attractive than trawling for significance in the stinking slime? Such nitpicking was the work of novelists like Norman Bakewell who, in their hit or miss fashion, manage it fairly well, and make it amusing to read about.

Any answers might be too gloomy to endure, or too bland to respect, and only those without a satisfying life deceived themselves into thinking an explanation could be dragged out of the subconscious (whatever
that
was) or that any good was to be had from fruitless revelations. And suppose you were telling someone about yourself, who would be interested in self pitying maunderings rather than hearing of bizarre and manly events that made a fascinating story?

Only pathetic and inferior people got involved with the therapy of analysis, or took drugs to blast a way through the obfuscations to a mind that was still as puerile when the dust had blown away. Tom thought that the less he knew about himself the more of a puzzle he would seem to everyone else, and there was much advantage to be gained from that.

After three days of unmitigated sex he travelled back on a different
plane to Diana, thus avoiding any taint of suspicion. He left nothing to chance, yet his unthreaded spirit plagued him as he stretched both legs in first-class and poured from a half-bottle of champagne. The stewardess wondered why he laughed, and why he drank so obviously to himself by holding the glass up to her. Poor slob, she thought, he’s put his girlfriend on another flight, and now he has to go home and face his wife.

Tom found it encouraging to believe that whenever he had been to bed with Diana – or whoever else – any young woman within range would be curious about him. It could be that his marriage to Angela had made him an interesting if not near perfect man for other women who, being clever and intuitive, felt it – which thought made him smile as he fastened his safety belt.

Yet things didn’t seem as right as they ought to be, and there were times when he felt timid and insignificant, having nothing, deserving nothing, and existing in an aura of boring mediocrity, an utterly dissatisfied state of mind which no one else was allowed to suspect. To lift himself out of this near fatal fit of corroding worthlessness needed such energy as, when he succeeded, gave him a shark-like and not unsubtle advantage in dealing with anyone at work (and elsewhere) who stood in his way. He never knew the reason for this sudden descent into a bleak landscape, had no indication as to where it was or where it had come from. God-given and God-smitten, was all he could say. Maybe it was the curse of the black dog, which resulted from too much good living, too much hard work, and too much sex.

A glimpse of Hyde Park between the cumulus helped him back to an awareness of the world, making him feel as if London and everyone in it belonged to him. He never travelled with enough luggage to put on the conveyor, so could go through the nothing to declare – but not too quickly in case the Customs people suspected his briefcase to be bulging with crack – and take a taxi straight to the office.

The M4 was blocked as usual, by a lorry that had shed its load – or was it a burst water main, or a chemical spill, or one of those common accidents involving a half blind non smoking teetotal vegetarian of eighty hurrying for his (or her) insulin shot? Well, whatever was wrong with Tom, he knew he was in love with Diana, and that their liaison was worth all he put into it, because the more you did the better it would get, which was better for both and so, ultimately, best of all for him.

Walking up the path at dusk, a raddled tiredness made every limb ache, but he forced a brisk pace, because for some reason it annoyed Angela when his behaviour suggested he’d had a hard day at the office. He supposed that even signs of a back-breaking slog down the coalmine would have put a curve of disapproval on her lips.

Leaves blowing erratically against the background of a lighted window made it look as if the house was on fire. She usually sat in the living room with her evening vodka and orange, but she wasn’t there. An empty bottle and glass lay on the low table, and every light from the entrance hall to the attic had been left on.

Not in the dazzling white kitchen, either, two plates on the floor overflowing with bits of something gone crispy and black. Upstairs two at a time, he found her by the uncurtained window of their bedroom, holding the little black tape recorder he had been so good as to bring her back from – where the hell was it?

She wore the dress in which he had first noticed her at the office party, the line of small gold buttons on the plum coloured material moulding her bosom to a good figure still. The white lace collar set off her face, though her normally wavy dark hair was as straight as if she had just walked in from a monsoon, which he thought strange, for the hair drier was of the latest powerful make. Even the strongest of men would have been alarmed at her pallid cheeks, as if she had been poisoned by a long afternoon sleep.

‘What is it, love?’

At the press of a switch the sound of his voice couldn’t be denied. He’d heard it before, but is that what it’s like? Scrape, scrape, mumble and snigger. Well, it would be, for something like that, wouldn’t it? Hoping he wasn’t betrayed by the pallor of his own skin brought a laugh up from his ribs when she pressed the machine off.

‘Oh, that!’ he said, ‘I was reading a bit of Norman Bakewell’s latest while getting dressed, sort of acting it out. And you thought I was up to something else! What a beautiful, suspicious and adorable person you are! I love you more and more for thinking that, because it shows how much you love me. You don’t need to flatter me to that extent, sweetheart.’

An ominous sensation told him that his patter wasn’t convincing, not even to himself. You bet it wasn’t. But he went forward to embrace her.

She stepped away. ‘Who’s Diana, you two-timing fucking rat?’ The tape recorder shed pieces after bouncing against his forehead and hitting the floor.

He hoped the liquid was sweat rather than blood, recalling Bakewell’s noble stance at Charlotte’s lunch party when Jo Hesborn had clobbered him for far less than this. ‘She’s a character in Norman’s novel. It was so enthralling I took it to Germany with me. Looks like we’ve got another bestseller on our hands. I left it at the office, but I’ll finish it tomorrow. I wouldn’t have put it down, but I wanted to be with you for the evening.’

‘Oh, did you?’

‘Thought we could go out for a meal.’ He put a hand over his face. ‘God, that really hurt. What did you do it for?’

There was something to be said for not saying very much, but there was even more to be said for saying so much that she wouldn’t be able to disbelieve the lies he was forced to tell. Failing that, she would be mystified by what she thought he was trying to say – the verbal equivalent of drowning a treaty in ink. All the same, this
was life on the Heaviside layer. He would have to take even more care, knowing by her blow what a pity it was that technology hadn’t stopped at the bicycle, the battery-run wireless set, and the wind-up gramophone, but had progressed, if you could call it that, to the diabolical invention of a tape recorder set going by the human voice.

‘I asked you who she was, you lying deceiving gett.’

He was disappointed by how easily she went back to her origins, and she could sense him thinking it, which pained her so much that she angled a heavy glass ashtray halfway upwards. ‘Who is she?’

He flinched. ‘Throw that, and I’ll phone the police.’

‘Will you?’ she raged.

He certainly would. ‘I’d rather them handle you than me kill you. I’ve no intention of running the firm from a prison cell.’

She lowered it, not her plan to kill him – yet. He would die by a thousand cuts. ‘Why don’t you call mummy and daddy, and tell them what a pathetic fix you’re in?’

‘They’re dead, and you know it.’

‘I expect you broke their hearts.’

Better and better. Talking was all she wanted, no one could resist it, proof of his recognition that she was alive, and he was fulfilling his obligations towards her as a human being. ‘They died of old age. I was a late birth, the only son. They loved me, and I loved them. Oh, you know all that.’

She sat, hands on her knees, skirt rucked up. It excited him, the bastard. She pulled it down. From now on I wear nothing but trousers. ‘And they spoiled you rotten. You’ve allus seen yourself as God’s gift to humanity, but you’re not to me anymore.’

‘I never thought I was any of that. But I loved you and still love you.’ Shame she yanked her skirt down. ‘I love you more than ever. I’ll always love you.’

‘You won’t if I know it.’

‘I will. You can’t stop me. I adore the ground you walk on.’

‘Oh, do you, then?’

‘Yes, I do.’ They were bickering. Better than ever. But he was angry with himself because stupidity was unforgivable, and bad luck frightening, which made him want comforting, so he became tender towards her in the hope that she would provide it. She mistook his attitude for contrition, and for the moment regretted her violence, almost willing to put aside the enormity of what he had done, because really there was no point when the only thing to do was walk away from this state of five-star humiliation.

Gradually she was soothed and, after kisses that sealed a lightning-charged truce, he put on the suit in which he too had been at the party – thinking it a nice touch – and walked her to a restaurant across Holland Park Road.

A bottle of champagne and the best food on the card would bring her round, though between each lovey-dovey clinking of glasses he reminded himself that in the morning he must go through his wallet and fax book to make sure there were no clues as to Diana or her whereabouts.

He doesn’t know me. They had made very satisfactory love and now he had gone to sleep. He thinks an orgasm makes up for everything, and I’m going to say no more, when he’s been doing it on me ever since we got married. I see now why my body threw out his rotten kid. And all those times I went to Yorkshire on my own he was pushing his filthy cock up all the scruffy tuppences he could find.

No wonder he’s always had so much work to do at the office and been so knackered when he got home. I could go on the razz myself but I wouldn’t do it just to get back on him. I don’t see any men I fancy these days, and if I did I don’t suppose they’d fancy me, but if ever I do do it I’ll do it in my own good time.

He’d be easy to deceive because the only person he knows about
is himself. All the times I’ve gone through the gamut of a bad cold or the flu without him being aware, but when he caught it, whining about who had passed it on at the office, he moaned in bed for at least three days. When they both had colds she had to deny hers because two people could no more have one at the same time than they could complain of a common misfortune – and he’d never noticed.

The issue stopped her getting to sleep, when up to now she had fallen off the ledge and felt nothing till morning. Whoever robbed her of slumber was guilty of murdering her dreams. Her language lapsed again, something else to destroy him for: I’ll fucking kill ’er. I’ve had the sort of upbringing where I would never let anybody put one over on me. I’ve been spoiled by having it that easy, spoiled even rottener than him with his pampering, which is something he’ll never understand.

Changing position didn’t help. His snoring, as always after he had swined and dined, was like a lawnmower going over rocky ground, but she was bothered more than before because he had set on a stoat to eat up her brain. The shit-nosed little animal was halfway through the front lobes and getting on very well towards the back, thank you very much, but soon there would be nothing left so it would turn round and start again at the front, hoping a few scraps remained from the first time through. The more it stoated back and forth the more determined she was to clock Tom and his moll who had let it loose. First of all – getting out of bed – I’ll go through his things and find out just who that bitch Diana is, because she’s not going to be like herself much longer.

Diana often swore she would never have an affair with a married man, not realising till too late that whoever said never would sooner or later be inveigled into doing whatever they’d said they would never do never about. In the first place, the hole and corner complications would drive her spare, and in the second, if the other
woman found out, she might be miserable, which Diana was too humane, or too loyal to her own sex, to gloat over. In the third place she didn’t want to get close enough to another woman to the extent of sharing her through her husband.

And now here was Tom phoning to say that his wife had pulled the big whistle from her bloomers and blown it long and loud after their time in Rome. He wouldn’t be seeing her for a while, he said, though there was nothing he wanted more in the world. He could be lying, of course, because what more appropriate time was there to end an affair than after a wonderful few days on the Mainland? His tone was so adoring that she had to believe his spiel, though her faith in his abilities went down a notch or two at his wife finding out. Had he done it deliberately? Shit-headed Norman Bakewell said that people only let their opposite know of their entanglements when they wanted a bit more excitement; and that sort she could well live without.

She opened a half-bottle of Beaujolais and threw the cork in the bin. Such a sexy weekend made her want to see him next day, tonight, this minute, instead of waiting the fortnight he implied she might have to. She tore off the plastic and put a steak under the grill. His pleading tone was something new. He was afraid of his wife. It was worth a laugh, because most men were. A programme arranged in Sheffield would keep her away for a week, and if her craving didn’t diminish she would see who might be possible among the camera crew. Tom was sleeping with his wife, so she had a right to a diversion as well.