Crazy Paving (3 page)

‘Yes,’ replied Annette.

‘I’d hang them,’ spat Raymond. ‘They should all be hanged. Every one of them. Bloody Irish.’

Annette returned to the Schedule of Dilapidations she was typing. The vehemence of Raymond’s opinions irritated her even when she agreed with him, and in this case she did not.

Joan picked up the phone. It would not have occurred to her to ring Alun, but seeing Annette so considerate about her mother, she wondered if her husband might be concerned.

Alun was on shifts that week so he was at home. ‘Hello?’

‘Oh hello Alun, it’s only me. I just thought I would tell you, a bomb’s gone off.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I’m alright. I’m fine in fact. I’m in the office. I’m at work.’

‘Yes I know.’ Hearing his irritation made Joan feel stupid. She often felt stupid when she spoke to her husband.

Richard had emerged and was conferring with Raymond. He too thought that bombers should be hanged. Then he went back to his office.

‘There’s no excuse for it,’ pronounced Raymond to Joan and Annette, ‘no excuse for it at all.’ Having no audience for his opinions never bothered Raymond, any more
than he would worry if nobody was listening to his jokes. If no one thought them funny, he was more than happy to provide the laughter on his own. If no one agreed with him that those who planted
bombs should be strung up, then he was perfectly content to agree with himself.

‘Oh dear,’ said Joan as she put down the phone. ‘I suppose they’ll close all the stations. The traffic will be terrible.’

‘It’ll be alright by tonight,’ said Annette, without looking up from her work.

‘There was a bus crash up my way last week,’ said Joan. ‘A bus went over on its side going round a corner. It ended up leaning up against a lamp-post. Imagine sitting on a bus
that was leaning up a lamp-post.’

Annette kept her head down. ‘I suppose you would slope rather a lot.’

‘I mean,’ Joan continued amiably, ‘if you get a train you crash, if you get a bus you end up sloping. If you walk down the street a litter bin blows up.’

Raymond had turned to go but turned back and rounded on Joan. ‘It’s not the same thing!’ he exploded furiously. ‘Honestly Joan, how can you say that!’

Annette looked up. Raymond was usually polite to Joan. She was fifty-four and Raymond regarded himself as a gentleman.

He continued. ‘It’s just that kind of immorality that lets the IRA get away with this sort of thing.’

Joan was looking at him. She blinked.

Raymond sighed. ‘A bomb exploding in the street,’ he explained patiently, ‘is not the same as a car crash or a train derailment. It is not an accident. It is something that
someone has done deliberately. It is not something to be merely regretted. We need to take action!’ He concluded this speech by thumping the air with his fist, turning smartly on his heel and
striding off down the office. Joan looked at Annette.

‘Raymond doesn’t have a member of the IRA handy,’ said Annette, ‘so it looks as though you’re the next best thing.’

‘But I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Joan.

‘I know,’ said Annette with a sigh. One of these days, she thought, I am going to push something unpleasant up Raymond’s left nostril.

Joan stood and went to the filing cabinet. ‘Actually,’ she said as she returned to her desk, ‘I think maybe I did mean it like that.’

Annette looked up again.

Joan plonked the day file on her lap and unclipped it. She picked up a handful of papers from her in-tray and began to sort them into date order. ‘The fact is,’ she continued,
‘as far as we’re concerned, it might as well be like a bus crash. We have no control over it. It could happen any time. We just have to think about statistics and cross our fingers.

‘Someone might have died in that bomb we just heard,’ she added as she began to insert the pages into the file. ‘And as far as he or she is concerned, the important thing was
that they walked down that street at that time, instead of stopping to buy a newspaper or taking another route. They went past the bomb. The bomb didn’t go past them.’

No one had died in the blast. The bomb had gone off down a side-street near Lambeth Bridge, in a rubbish skip. Two homeless people sleeping in a doorway opposite had been
slightly injured. Several windows had been blown out. The
Evening Standard
headline pasted to the newspaper sellers’ kiosks read, ‘
LONDONERS DEFY BOMB
TERROR
’. Annette bought a late edition to read while she waited in a pub off Broadway. She was having dinner with an old schoolfriend.

Later, she walked down Birdcage Walk and up Horse Guards Parade, to catch her train home. Whitehall was still cordoned off, even though the bomb had been streets away. There was a nice pub on
Whitehall, she remembered, with snugs and wooden floorboards. It probably got evacuated nightly now.

The snow had been falling all day and by early evening it had settled. Now it floated sparsely in huge flakes which swung from side to side as they descended. Trafalgar Square was empty. The
occasional bus or car drove slowly through the slush. Orange street-lamps lit up an inky sky. As she crossed the square she made deep, fresh prints in the ankle-deep snow. The only sounds were the
distant hum of traffic from the Strand and the soft swoosh of a passing black cab as it ploughed gently past the National Gallery. London, thought Annette with a sigh, is the most beautiful place
on earth.

By Friday the snow had gone rotten; melted into a deep brown dampness. Walking along a pavement was a treacherous business. Trying to cross the road was hell. Intermittently it
drizzled or the wind blew but the weather couldn’t make its mind up. Commuters found its indecision irritating.

Annette was visiting her mother that weekend and struggled into work with an overnight bag and a carrier full of old tights. Annette’s mother collected old tights.

It had been a busy week. Richard had been in a panic over the Sports Grounds’ specifications. Raymond had had an urgent schedule. Expecting Joan to do anything complicated on the computer
was out of the question. Annette had buckled down with grim determination, allowing herself a glimmer of satisfaction in the knowledge that without her the entire department would grind to a
halt.

Friday was a quiet day, thank God. Most of the boys were out on site visits. Richard had a project meeting at two thirty. It would be nice with him shut in his office for a couple of hours. He
had been hurling dictation work at her all week with mounting frenzy. By Thursday, he had taken to emerging from his office, whistling, then tossing a tape at her from the door. It would sail over
her computer to land in her in-tray or, once, on her head.

She was half-way through the first memo when the telephone on Helly’s desk rang. She couldn’t see Helly from where she sat but knew she was supposed to be at her desk. Joan was out
at a dental appointment. Annette let the phone ring six times before muttering, picking up the receiver on her desk and pressing seven. It was Reception; some more of Richard’s visitors were
here.

‘Helly?’ Annette stood in front of Helly’s desk. Helly had her arms resting on it and her forehead on her arms. She was trying to go to sleep.

‘What?’ Helly responded, without lifting her head.

‘Richard’s visitors have arrived. Go and meet them at the lift or you’ll be sacked.’

Annette returned to her desk and replaced her audio headphones. She pressed the foot pedal. Richard’s crisp tones pronounced, ‘
In addition, and
furthermore, I draw your
attention to my memo of .
. .’

Helly rose to her feet so slowly she nearly fell over. By the time she was half-way down the office, the gentlemen from Arnold & Sons had emerged from the lift and were
standing in front of the swing doors, blinking.

‘Hello. This way,’ said Helly from approximately twenty paces. She turned smartly on her heel and led them back down the office at some speed. The two men trotted after her.

At the door to Richard’s office, she paused. Then she tapped and opened it, standing back and gesturing for the men to go in. They moved forward hesitantly. She heard Richard greet them.
She tried to close the door behind them but it caught on the second one’s heel. ‘Sorry,’ she said as he looked back. She went to pull the door shut but it was too late.

‘Helen!’ Richard’s voice called from inside the office. She rolled her eyes, fixed a smile on her face and opened the door.

Richard was standing behind his desk. William, the new surveyor, sat on his right. Raymond sat on his left. One of the contractors and an architect were sitting in front of the desk. The two men
from Arnold & Sons were struggling with plastic chairs which they were trying to fit into the small remaining space next to the architect. One of them had decided to sit on his chair first,
grasp the edges with both hands and nudge it sideways.

‘We’ll have coffee thank you Helen,’ said Richard in a tone of voice that suggested politeness within the context of total command.

The contractor was called Mr Robinson. He had a pitted, bulging nose which he blew often into handkerchiefs the size of cushion covers. ‘Ah, Helen,’ he declared, grinning at her.
‘The face that launched a thousand tea trolleys!’

‘What?’ said Helly.

‘Oh never mind,’ he said. The men laughed.

She looked at them expectantly. ‘Tea for me,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘One sugar.’

‘Coffee,’ said the architect.

‘Coffee, black please,’ said one of the men from Arnold & Sons and his companion added, ‘Same.’

‘White coffee,’ said Raymond.

‘Did I say white?’ asked the architect.

‘Usual,’ said Richard.

‘Oh, I’ll have a tea please,’ said William.

‘Gosh,’ said Mr Robinson, cheerily. ‘Will you remember all that?’

While the kettle boiled, Helly rummaged through the cupboard to find the family selection tin of biscuits which was reserved for visitors. A memo had recently gone round
reminding staff that the contents of this particular tin were for consumption at meetings only. While she arranged some of them on a plate and poured the drinks, she stuck the end of a pink wafer
between her lips and sucked at it. As she leant over the tray to reach the sugar bowl, the remaining end fell off and landed with a small splash in one of the cups of tea. She fished it out with a
spoon.

When she reached Richard’s door, she tapped it lightly with one foot. A voice called, ‘Come in.’

Stupid gits, she thought, and tapped again.

There was a small rumpus from inside and the door opened. They parted to allow her to set down the tray on Richard’s desk. The two men from Arnold & Sons had to jump up and pull back
the chairs that they had arranged with such care. There was shuffling, murmurs. Eventually there was just room for Helly to make her way through. She edged sideways past the architect’s chair
and leant forward. As she did, her shirt tightened against the front of her body and her skirt rode higher up her thighs. The seven men observed her in silence.

The tray slipped as she put it down and the plate of biscuits slid dangerously towards the edge. The men all leant forward. Richard took the plate of biscuits from the tray and set it down in
front of himself. Helly negotiated the tray and stood back to allow them to take their drinks. ‘Thank you Helen,’ Richard said. William and Mr Robinson nodded their agreement. She
waited for them to help themselves so that she could remove the tray.

There was a white coffee left. The architect was looking at Richard. ‘I think I said black.’

‘Helen,’ Richard said, lifting the tray up with a tight little smile, ‘Mr Smallwood said black.’ Helly took it from him.

The filter jug was almost empty. Helly poured the architect the dregs. Some grounds were still stuck in the bottom so she scraped them out with a teaspoon and added them to the cup. Then she
topped it up with cold water from the tap, stirring well. She put some fresh coffee on to brew.

By the time she had returned to Richard’s office, the meeting was under way. Mr Robinson was talking. As he spoke, the biscuit plate was being passed slowly round the group. His eyes were
fixed on it. ‘I’m not sure that’s the point really,’ he was saying as he observed William helping himself to a jammy dodger. ‘The point is, do we want to be reactive
or proactive? Like, just complaining or really sorting these guys out? Do we want them to do the job properly or do we want a custard cream?’ There was a pause. ‘I mean, do we want them
to come up with the yum-yums? I mean, the goodies – er, goods,’ he ended in confusion.

‘Quite,’ said Richard.

Helly took advantage of the pause to hand the architect his very black coffee.

Helly returned to her corner and slumped back into her chair. She put her elbows on her desk and chin in her hands, listening to the hum of the wall heater behind her desk and
the intermittent click and whirr of Annette’s audio machine.

Then she leant back and pulled some filing onto her lap so that it would look as if she was working if anyone walked past. While she shuffled the papers around, she prepared her little speech
for Richard. About ten to five should do it. His visitors would have gone. Friday night. He wouldn’t have long to argue or he would miss his train.

Annette had completed the first tape by half past three, in time to look up from her desk and see that Philip Woodrow from Commercial was sweeping round the corner with a paper
plate on which sat three fresh cream éclairs. He was also holding a partially consumed bottle of dessert wine. He put down the paper plate and waved the bottle. ‘Mugs?’ he
enquired cheerily.

‘In the coffee alcove,’ said Annette. ‘What’s the occasion?’

He was gone before she had finished but when he came back he said, slightly indignantly, ‘Roger’s birthday!’ He poured wine into three mugs. ‘Where’s
Joan?’

‘At the dentist,’ said Annette. ‘I don’t think she’s going to want a cream cake.’

‘You’ll have to eat two then,’ he said and strode off, swinging the bottle.

Helly had appeared.

‘Cake,’ said Annette, indicating the plate.