Crazy Paving (29 page)

As Arthur Robinson’s fourth éclair made its way down his gullet, Annette’s chocolate cake was coming back up hers. She had bought the cake on her way home
from work, from the little shop on Hither Green Lane. She had gone in for teabags, then she had seen the cake and found herself reaching for it with all the slow, solemn purpose of a Dalek. From
that moment on, the rest of her Wednesday evening had been defined.

She sank down into a sitting position beside the toilet. So, she thought, it wasn’t just going home last weekend that did it. It’s back. Each time it went away, she thought that she
would not do it again. Each time it returned, she felt sure it would never stop. It was this that made it so unbearable. Full blown anorexia, one hundred per cent madness; at least if she had
either of those she would know what she was. She had had this problem since early adolescence, but every time it reached the point where she thought she should do something about it, it stopped
– as if there was a small ghost in her stomach. She did not even know what the ghost was called.

She laid her bare arm on the cool enamel of the toilet seat. The rich smell of vomit rose up from the bowl. She sat there, the hot stink in her nostrils, and thought of William, last week, and
their scene in the basement. They had not spoken to each other all week, so now she knew that he knew it was over. She was relieved, and miserable. She thought about his hands, the bitten nails,
the slightly crooked left thumb. She thought of how he had felt inside her on the cold hard floor of the Capital Transport Authority’s store cupboard, next to the battered boxes full of
paperclips.

William did know that it was over with Annette, but he was pretending that he didn’t. He was also pretending that he wanted sex with his wife. They were in bed. His
sojourn on the sofa had lasted only one night, but the silence with which Alison had allowed him back into their bed had indicated to him that he was on probation.

They were both wearing pyjamas. His were brushed cotton, hers silky. She was wearing her reading glasses and was seemingly intent upon an orange book called
Cours illustre de
français
. William had his hand rested on her thigh and was turned sideways, looking at her. He did not know why he was doing it. He had a vague idea that if he pretended he wanted sex,
then whatever conclusion she had come to about his behaviour over the last few weeks would be somehow confused. He thought that, perhaps, he would get away with whatever she had guessed him to be
guilty of.

‘William . . .’ Alison said slowly, without taking her eyes off her book. ‘You are touching me safe in the knowledge that I will say no, and I think that is despicable.’
He removed his hand. ‘Touch me again,’ she said, turning a page, ‘and you can go downstairs to the sofa again and stay there.’

Helly was on the sofa in her house in Stockwell. Wednesday night was the night her mother usually went out bonking the dentist, a source of great relief to all concerned. They
hadn’t spoken to each other since the incident over the knickers. As soon as her mother had gone, Helly had turned off the telly and gone upstairs to her room. Hidden in a box beneath her bed
was the book on German Expressionism which she had, at last, managed to pinch from the Tate.

She took it downstairs because there was a standard lamp in the sitting room with a good strong bulb. She brought it over and balanced it on the arm of the sofa. On the coffee table beside her
was a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits which she had also stolen, from a health food shop in Brixton. The book was the prize, though, the biscuits could wait. She sat with her feet up on the
table and the book on her lap. She sighed, and smiled. Then, slowly, she lifted the cover and began to turn the thick, glossy pages. She passed her fingers lightly over the prints, relishing the
silky feel of the paper, the fresh smell of a virgin book – light and beauty and knowledge. Sod her mother. Sod the dentist. Sod them all. Helly knew the definition of the word sex. It was
here, resting in her lap, clean and glowing in her hands.

Joan was already in bed. She usually got an early night during the week. As it was the first week back after their holiday, Alun was on shifts and already upstairs in bed when
she got home from work. That Wednesday, she joined him around ten.

For some reason, that night she couldn’t sleep. She turned over several times, trying to get comfortable. Alun stirred and murmured, ‘What . . . God . . .’ Thinking that she
should try not to disturb him she rose, pulled on her dressing-gown with her big wool cardigan on top, then tiptoed downstairs.

The sitting room was gloomy and dark. She felt her way across to the sideboard and turned on the heavy lamp with the floral lampshade. Then she turned on the television and stood in front of it,
flicking from channel to channel. There was some news programme on two; politicians arguing about terrorism. She turned it off. She stood in the cold and half-lit room. Why couldn’t she
sleep? What was wrong? On the sideboard, a wooden clock with gilt edging ticked surreptitiously. Next to it was an Easter card that had arrived early, written in her cousin Gilda’s spidery
hand. On the front was a glowing golden cross.
He died and rose again
, said the inscription. Cousin Gilda had found God two years ago and sent them cards on every occasion which had a
remotely religious significance. Funny that it’s called Good Friday, Joan thought. Why good, when something so bad is supposed to have happened? She shivered. No re-births for her or Alun
– for any of them. No rising again. Just blackness. The end.

What
is
wrong with me? she thought again. She rose to her feet and went over to the sideboard. She picked up Cousin Gilda’s card. As she did, the bulb in the floral lampshade made
a small pop-pink sound – and she was plunged into darkness.

In Benny’s dreams, the horses came galloping towards him across a wide open plain. The sound of their hooves was like water rushing in his ears and sometimes the large
palomino at the front let out a wild, joyous braying sound. He would awake, then lie in the darkness, confused, listening to the steady hum of traffic on the Kennington Road and the dying fall of a
passing police siren. Benny loved his dreams. Even the nightmares were better than the dead moment that came after he awoke and realised where he was: damp, cold, far away.

On that particular Wednesday night, he woke blearily, turning himself over onto his front with the sensation of having rolled over onto a small warm animal, a bit like a hamster. He rolled back
and opened his eyes. The interior of his igloo was completely dark. Then he felt the slight dampness in his groin. He closed his eyes again and groaned. The last time he had had a wet dream was the
night before the men had came and broken his brother’s legs. It was a bad omen.

He groped for the small, battery-powered torch which Arthur Robinson had given him and turned it on. A weak golden crescent flickered over the large dark loops of the car tyres which formed his
home. Moon shadows hung around. Benny crossed himself.

The next day was Thursday, the day before Good Friday. Benny woke early and put his extra set of clothes on, on top of the ones he had slept in. It was time to go down to the
little house and wait, again. It was nearly three weeks since Señor Robinson had told him what he wanted doing to the little house and Benny was beginning to doubt the opportunity would
occur. He had seen the man go out, and the woman, but never together. Still, today maybe. He always went prepared. He slipped a hammer into the pocket of his jacket, before he pulled on his
coat.

Outside, it was only just light. The yard was cold and empty. Benny was always up before the other workers arrived. He trotted across to a pile of lumber covered in tarpaulin which sat against
one wall. He swung himself up on top of it, then reached up to grasp the top of the wall. Some time ago, he had chipped away the broken glass which was embedded in cement along the top, to make a
space just big enough for him to clutch with both hands and haul himself over. That way, he could come and go as he pleased.

Pictures, pictures, this whole damn cottage is full of pictures of one sort or another. And what good do they do? What are they for? Mrs Hawthorne was standing in her bedroom
in Rosewood Cottage, her nose a few inches from the Kandinsky print. What did it mean? That Bob – she blamed him. It didn’t come from her side of the family.

It was early evening. She had got up as soon as she had heard Bob and Joanna leave the house. She had watched them walk down Sutton Street and be swallowed up by the gloom at the end of the
road, hand in hand like a couple of silly teenagers. She couldn’t believe her luck. It was ages since they had both gone out together and given her a bit of peace and quiet. They were always
spying on her. Grown people; you’d think they’d have more important things to do. But now, at last, they had left her to her own devices for a whole evening. She was going to make the
most of it. She was going to have a good nose around, each room systematically, one by one. She was going to find out what they were planning. They thought she was virtually immobile, helpless.
They were wrong.

First she did the box room; nothing much there. Then the bathroom, and the cabinet she never got to look in because there was always someone fussing around when she wanted to go to the toilet.
There wasn’t much she could make sense of: some bottles of pills and lotions and what looked like a large tube of toothpaste, but when she squeezed a little onto her finger, it was a clear
substance.

Their bedroom also proved to be something of a disappointment. Mrs Hawthorne inspected the sheets, but the light from the stairs wasn’t bright enough to see properly and she didn’t
want to turn on any more in case they came back unexpectedly and caught her at it. In the corner was Bob’s desk, where he did all his silly jigsaws and suchlike. She groped her way over. By
the thin landing light she could just see, in the middle of the desk, his new picture, the one he had been telling her about. She picked it up. Then, grasping it as if for support, she made her way
over to the door, to take a proper look.

She was standing at the top of the stairs peering at it when she heard the noise. It came from downstairs, from the kitchen. She froze. Then it came again. It sounded like the slow, harsh scrape
of a sash window being lifted.

The first game was over by seven and Bob was the clear winner. He had managed to rid himself of all seven letters and scored the extra fifty. His word had been
ablative
. After that, the others had lost heart.

Jill rose from the table, good-humouredly considering she had been in the lead until Bob’s unexpected coup, and offered to fix another drink. ‘Shall we put the news on?’ she
asked over her shoulder as she went across to their well-stocked booze cabinet. ‘We haven’t heard it yet today.’

‘Nah . . .’ her husband Tom replied. ‘To hell with that old rubbish, I want to beat this bastard at something.’

Bob stretched out his hands and rubbed them together, grinning. ‘You’ll have a fight on your hands mate, I’m on form tonight.’

‘Listen to him,’ said Joanna. ‘I think we should bring him down a peg or two.’ Tom rose from the table to help his wife. Joanna turned to Bob. ‘Don’t get too
big for your boots sunshine, or you’ll have me to deal with when we get home.’

Bob smiled and put a hand on top of her head. ‘Isn’t it great to have an evening out?’

‘Not half.’

In another life, Benny might perhaps have been a lawyer, or a brain surgeon. He had intelligence and he had guts. He had instinct. Thus it was that, when something came
hurtling at him through the half-gloom of the Appleton’s small kitchen, he knew that he had got it badly wrong and that the cottage was not empty after all. Strangely, he saw horses –
paper horses, their heads hanging from an indistinct rectangle. He turned to one side and tried to duck but even as he did his heart caved in and he resigned himself to darkness. Benny knew a
nemesis when he saw one.

Mrs Hawthorne had not always been a barmy old lady. She had once been a single mother, a widow, a capable woman with a young child called Joanna. One day, the small Joanna had
tripped and landed on her head. Mrs Hawthorne had taken her to the local doctor who had said, ‘As long as she fell on her forehead she’ll be fine. Back of the head or behind the ear,
that’s when we’ll worry.’

So it was that as Mrs Hawthorne stood stock still just inside the kitchen door, the picture in one hand and a cast iron saucepan in the other, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She
waited as Benny eased himself over the windowsill. The picture first, to make him duck down, then the saucepan. Behind the ear, the doctor had told her, and she thought it strange that she had not
realised all those years ago how useful that information would one day be.

Bob and Joanna stood in the kitchen for a full three minutes before either of them spoke. They had taken in the situation but stood in silence still, taking it in some more.
The window was open. A hammer lay beneath it. Face down on the floor beside the hammer was a small dark man in scruffy clothing with blood seeping from the back of his head. He was dead. The blood
had spread in a puddle and was leaking down into the cracks in their speckled linoleum. On the other side of the corpse lay Bob’s new
découpage
picture: the Horses of the
Apocalypse they had indeed proved to be.

On a kitchen chair next to Benny sat Mrs Hawthorne, clutching the handle of a cast iron saucepan. She was gibbering. Her eyes were glassy and spittle ran down her chin. Her pink hair-net was
hanging from one ear. ‘Half a farthing . . .’ she burbled. ‘Half a farthing, threepence ha’penny for a twist. Twist, you used to get. Paper bags. They used to stick
together. Jam or biscuit, not both. We chose each night, jam or biscuit.’

‘What are we going to do?’ said Bob, eventually. Joanna glanced across at her mother, then at Benny’s corpse. ‘Bury him in the wasteground?’ she suggested.

‘Joanna!’