Crazy Paving (12 page)

The previous night, they had had friends round to dinner. William was full of Annette – their lunch, their kiss, their future – so he had been more jovial and talkative than usual,
to cover up the fact that he didn’t feel like talking at all. This morning, after breakfast, he had feigned a hangover. He had to get Alison out of the house.

He waited tensely until he heard the front door slam. Then, every muscle relaxed. ‘I won’t be more than an hour,’ Alison had said. A whole hour. A whole hour to do nothing
except think about Annette. He lay on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. He thought through the rights and wrongs of phoning her, making a mental list. Rights: I want to talk to her; I am
desperate to hear her voice; I’d do anything to be with her right now; I’ll go crazy if I have to wait until Monday morning. Wrongs: she might not be in; she might be in but not want to
talk to me; I will probably make a complete berk of myself. He picked up the phone.

The answer machine clicked on after two rings. He listened to her message, her cool, efficient, measured voice. As the beep went, he slammed down the phone.

Where was she? Out at the shops, probably. Probably. Maybe she was in. Perhaps, if he had spoken, she would have picked up the phone. Or maybe there was someone else with her. She had left the
machine on and turned the ringer volume down, so that they would not be disturbed. The thought made him crazy, so he thought it some more. During their lunch, he had carefully avoided asking her
what she was going to do that night. If he went too fast it would scare her off. If she was unattached, what
did
she do on Friday nights? How many friends did she have? She was beautiful;
she probably had hundreds. He was probably the seventh man to ring her that morning, anxiously, and hang up without leaving a message. He should have left a message.

Already, he felt humiliated. Here he was, on a Saturday morning, with a whole precious hour to himself. Normally he would have been gardening or watching television or sleeping. Instead, he was
staring at the ceiling, thinking about Annette. Beautiful Annette. Bloody Annette. She wasn’t thinking about him. She was in bed with someone else with the answer machine on and the ringer
off. She was saying to him, ‘You’ll never guess. There’s this bloke at work who fancies me. I had lunch with him yesterday but just for a laugh. He’s such a jerk. He’s
called William.’ Henry – the man she was sleeping with – was replying, ‘William? Really?’ They were having a good laugh.

Then he thought of how she had looked the second before he had kissed her in the lift, the slow lowering of her eyelids. He groaned at the recollection. He had lifted his hand and placed his
palm on her cheek. Her arm had encircled him, underneath his jacket. He could still feel the soft, insistent pressure of her fingertips.

He rolled over onto his side, wrapping his arms around himself, drawing himself in. His penis began to fill, pressing against his boxer shorts, causing a small ache to grow and blossom in his
pelvic region; an unlocated pain, as if an animal was growing inside his groin. He uncurled, rolling onto his back and stretching out. Annette, Annette – the feel of her fingers on his
spine.

He reached out and took the phone off the hook. As he rolled over, his T-shirt rode up from his jeans. He rubbed his stomach with the flat of one hand, imagining it was Annette’s hand.
Then he allowed the hand to wander of its own accord, downwards. They were in a hotel room in Paris, or Vienna or Rome – anywhere except England. (Anywhere a good long way from Bromley.) The
hand fiddled around the top button of his jeans, unsure of itself. It twisted the button open. Then it paused. He groaned. Don’t torment me, he thought. Torment me, he begged. The hand
wandered over the top of his jeans to the fat full swelling underneath. She was lying on top of him, wearing a transparent white blouse. The hand began to flip open each button on his flies. She
was sitting astride his legs, pinning them to the bed. He raised his buttocks slightly so that the hand could push his jeans down. As it did, he heard a soft chinking sound as some loose change
slipped out of his pockets and onto the bed. At last, the hand slipped inside his boxer shorts. He was hard as a rock. Annette was underneath him. She was raising her knees. She was all pale warmth
and wide eyes and her even, measured voice was saying in an even, measured way, ‘Yes . . .’

He finished curled up on his side, clutching himself. For a moment he lay, feeling the small sweet throb, the ebb and flow. Then he uncurled and reached over for the tissues that Alison kept on
her side of the bed. His hand was dripping. He wiped it then turned to scrape at the duvet cover. As he moved, he saw that he had managed to spurt over the loose change that had fallen from his
pocket. The coins lay in a small pile with a large dollop of spunk spread across them, two sins tangled into one. He counted. There were several pound coins, two fifties and other small silver
– nearly six quid. He wiped himself, sat upright and did up his flies. Then he scooped the coins up with the tissue and took them to the bathroom. He dropped them in the sink and ran some
warm water over them. Then he pulled off a strip of loo roll and laid it along the side of the bath. When he had washed the coins, he placed them one by one on the loo roll to dry. He went back to
the bedroom, to double check the duvet.

Annette stood over her answer machine and glared at it. She replayed the message. There it was, an unmistakable click. She had only taken the rubbish out to the bins at the end
of the cul-de-sac, and in the ten seconds she had been out of the house someone had rung. Her mother? Her mother never rang on a Saturday morning. Saturday morning was her appointment at the
hairdresser’s, which held the same importance for Annette’s mother as confession for a Jesuit. No, not her mother. Annette bit her lip, then began to smile. She strutted round her
living room in a neat circle.
Got him
, she thought. I’ve got him.

Alison and Paul were back after only twenty minutes. Alison had got as far as Superdrug and then remembered that she had left her chequebook behind. She had enough cash for the
toiletries but not the supermarket.

‘You’ll have to take him later. I did it last week,’ she added defensively.

William had come downstairs in a hurry. ‘Alright,’ he said quickly, and went over and gave her a hug. ‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ he said cheerfully.

Paul had broken away from his mother and charged up the stairs to take off his jumper.

‘On the chair Paul!’ Alison called after him. ‘Not on the floor. Neatly on the chair! Any post?’ she asked William.

William indicated an envelope on the kitchen table. ‘The insurance people.’

Alison sat and began to open it. ‘What did you do with Tanya’s card? I haven’t read it yet.’

‘I’ll get it,’ William said. He plugged in the kettle and went through to the living room.

While he was gone, Paul came downstairs. He had taken off his jumper and, while he was at it, his trousers and one sock. He had two fingers in his mouth. He came and stood by Alison’s
chair while she opened the letter.

‘Mummy,’ he said, wrapping his naked limb around her chair leg and putting three fingers in his mouth.

‘Yes darling?’ Alison replied. She reached out a hand and stroked his hair while she read the insurance company’s letter.

‘Why has Daddy left money in the bathroom?’

‘Has he?’ asked Alison absently.

‘Yes. On tissues. He’s left money on the bath on tissues.’

‘Don’t know darling,’ murmured Alison, ‘why don’t you run and ask him?’ Understand why, Richard thought. Then work out how.

It was Saturday in Surrey, too. Richard put down the phone. Arthur Robinson had rung first thing with the news. Benny had done well.

He went back into the kitchen. He was wearing his navy tracksuit and an Aran sweater. It felt good to be free of his suit, to be somewhere where he was not expected to make decisions. Gillian
had gone out a few minutes ago, with her friend Janice, to check the storm damage at the riding school. She had left a pot of coffee on the hob and brioches in the oven.

Newspapers were scattered across the table. He sat down and picked one up, scanned the front page and dropped it down again, frowning. He didn’t like Arthur Robinson having to ring him at
home. He resented the intrusion – but then this business had intruded, there was no doubt about that. Still, everything was turning out as he wanted. It would be fine.

Two of the dogs, Goldie and Petal, padded into the kitchen in procession, heads down and tongues lolling. They had been out galumphing round the garden.

‘Here . . .’ Richard patted his knees with both hands and whistled lightly. Goldie pottered over and landed her chin in Richard’s lap. ‘There, girl . . .’ Richard
scratched her roughly behind both ears, the way she liked. ‘Thirsty now, eh?’

Richard stood and went out to the utility room. A cold breeze was blowing in from the garden, through the door the dogs had pushed open. He closed it, then bent to pick up their tin water bowls.
Gillian had written Goldie and Petal on the sides with indelible black marker. ‘Come on girls! Here you are!’ Richard called out over the sounds of the water splashing into the tins.
Goldie bounded through.

As he walked back into the kitchen, Richard tripped on the step. He caught himself before he fell, landing against the door and giving a small cry as his back wrenched. It was still tender from
the after-effects of his near miss on the M23. As he righted himself, Petal lunged past him. Richard swore, swung round and kicked the dog full in the ribs, flinging her back into the kitchen.
Petal let out a yelp and then skittered back against the pine dresser, where she lay shaking with terror, panting in startled breaths, wide-eyed.

Richard leant against the doorpost, breathing more evenly. When he had recovered himself he went over to where Petal lay cowering and kneeled down beside her.

‘Stupid old dog,’ he murmured, his voice soft and coaxing. He raised the flat of his hand and stroked the dog’s trembling side, feeling for where he had kicked her, shaking his
head slightly from side to side. ‘Stupid . . . old . . . dog . . .’ His hand found the place. Petal whimpered. He stopped stroking.

Then he pressed – gently at first, then harder – until the dog let out a strangled, choking sound; a long, slow, inarticulate cry of bewilderment and pain.

Benny had followed the girl for two hours.

From Sutton Street she walked through Deptford to New Cross Gate, to a row of bus stops around which a disconsolate but mostly philosophical crowd was milling. She pushed through them and got on
a bus. Benny could tell the bus was going nowhere and simply waited on the pavement, hidden amongst a crowd of macs and denim jackets and duffle coats. Being small had its advantages – and
being dark. The one thing about London that Benny appreciated was that it was impossible to stand out in a crowd. Eventually, the girl got off again and joined the others. Benny watched her from
behind the safety of a woman’s bulky shoulder. The girl stood glancing around, rolling her eyes and pulling faces, then extracted a sweet from her pocket, popped it into her mouth and worked
it round her cheeks, peering down the road to see what was happening and tapping her foot to keep warm. A few feet away from the crowd, a smartly dressed woman in her middle years was haranguing a
lamp-post.

‘Think yer big, don’t you?’ she was calling up at it, pointing with a raised bony finger, ‘yer big bastard, think yer big.’

Eventually, the girl turned on her heel and began to walk. Benny followed. The girl kept her head bent, broke into a trot once in a while, then slowed down again. The wild wind seized her hair
and wrapped it round her head like a bandage until she stopped, put down her bag and tied it back with a rubber band. Even then the wind pulled strands free which flapped upwards illogically,
making her look like some small demon.

He lost her somewhere between Camberwell and Brixton. They were making their way down Cold-harbour Lane, a long road full of crumbling terraces set back from the street, with
stone steps and railings leading up to doorways or down to basement flats with iron bars over the windows. Many of the houses were boarded up, the windows blinded eyes of brick. One of them had
been occupied by squatters who had hung bright banners from the first floor. Another had a damp, yawning Rottweiler chained to the railings, unenthusiastically guarding an open front door.

They came to a row of shops: newsagent, butcher, junk shop. Helly paused to tie back her hair again and Benny stopped and looked in the butcher’s window. Apart from a plastic tub of mince,
the only product was an obscenely long protrusion of bone and bloodied gristle which lay diagonally in a metal tray:
Frozen cow’s tail, 75p/lb
. Benny shook his head in disbelief. In
his country, poor people had some dignity. When he looked up again, Helly had gone.

He stepped out into the road and peered ahead. She was nowhere in sight. Even if she had broken into a run, she couldn’t have reached the curve in the road.

The junk shop had windows filled with rusting gas cookers. In front, on the pavement, was an assortment of seventies furniture, wood veneered tables and chairs with orange plastic seats from
which fleshy yellow foam protruded. Just beyond it, Benny could now see an entrance.

The alleyway was long and gloomy, then broadened out at the end into the white light of a street. Dustbins and doorways lined either side and in the doorways lay bundles. The girl was already
half-way down. He began to follow, but cautiously. If she turned round now he would be spotted.

Then, suddenly, two things happened at once. Benny had the sensation of treading on something small and unyielding, and there came the loud hollow yelping of an animal in pain. He jumped back.
As he did, a brown shape at his feet metamorphosed into a skinny snarling dog – muzzle black, eyeballs huge and shiny, lips drawn back over tiny pointy teeth. The dog performed a neat frantic
circle, then sank its teeth into a filthy grey coat which lay on the floor beside it. The filthy grey coat leapt to its feet. Underneath it was a man with wild brown hair and a sand-filled
beard.