Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  She stared at the picture on the opposite wall. Her granddaughter had bought it for them, from the Tate gallery. ‘Some Russian geezer,’ Bob had muttered as he hung it. It was a print framed in glass, a coloured swirl of rainbows and splodges. Joanna found it a comfort, sitting next to her mother. This was how she imagined death; not as something black but as a mad pattern of coloured shapes, which mingled and collided: the strands of your life, which – after years of messing about – would finally coagulate and blur. The painting reassured her. It was true. All things met and ended, one day.

  Back at work, William sat at his desk and drew doodles on his spiral notepad. The place was deserted. Richard’s office was locked. Everyone else seemed to be at lunch. William had sandwiches in his desk drawer but he had eaten two large sausage rolls in a café by Surrey Docks station. He had waited for his train gazing out over the stark greys and browns of Rotherhithe. There is more to life than this, he had thought gloomily. There is more to life than visiting mad people in ugly places.

  Annette arrived back from lunch. He wandered over as she was unbuttoning her coat. ‘You’re wet,’ he said conversationally. Her cream-coloured mac was peppered with dark spots of rain. ‘When is Richard back?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ she said, sitting down and rummaging through her bags. ‘He was in that awful accident in Surrey last night. He’s alright, but it was really close, apparently. His back is bad but he said he should be fit by next week. He’ll be ringing in for messages.’

  ‘Nothing trivial I hope.’

  ‘Do you want to see what I bought?’ Annette pulled a lemon-coloured blouse out of a plastic bag and held it up. ‘In the sale, look. For the summer. To cheer myself up.’ The blouse was sleeveless, with a small white collar and large round buttons. The light from the window shone through it. ‘The assistants in there drive me mental,’ Annette said as she folded it up. ‘They’re so slow. How would you like to pay? One of these days I’m going to say, Oh, with rawlplugs.’

  Suddenly, William shivered. Annette chattered on but he was not listening to what she was saying. He was listening, rather, to the sound of her voice. It tinkled against his ear. While she talked, she pushed her bags under her desk and lifted up her handbag. She withdrew a small can of hairspray and a round brush. Her hands were small, her fingernails immaculate. ‘Won’t be a mo,’ she said, and breezed past him.

  He stood for a moment, watching her empty chair, as if he was surprised to find that she was no longer in it. Then he turned and went back to his desk. The office was still empty. He sat down and stared straight ahead.

  William had only been in love once, some years ago, during his first year as a probationary surveyor. He was working for the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham; external repair works. He had bounced out of Thames Polytechnic ready to take on the world and found, to his surprise, that the world was not interested in a fight. He had his first job within two months and it was easy. He used one tenth of the knowledge he had gained while he was training and promptly forgot the rest. He was still sharing a flat with student friends who remained unemployed, apart from one who was going on to do an MSc. Now that he was a member of the working majority, their ideas irritated him. He was a grown-up. He was moving on.

  He took two secretaries from work out to lunch, on separate occasions. One was very pretty but silent and awkward. The other was plain and wouldn’t stop talking. He had no intention of seeing either on a regular basis but felt he should do it for the practice. There was no one else at work he was remotely interested in, but sooner or later they would come along and he had every intention of being ready when they did. Grown-ups were.

  The months passed and the person he had prepared himself for did not arrive. He started taking Linda, the talkative secretary, to the cinema on Friday nights. Then he had sex with her and stopped. The next week, during an emotional scene in a pizza parlour, she accused him of losing interest the minute he had got what he wanted. This was not true. He had never been interested in the first place. He had talked her into sex because he felt it was expected of him. Telling Linda the truth would have hurt more than letting her believe the lie, so instead he looked at her sympathetically and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She slapped his face.

  For a few weeks, things were a little tricky. She refused to do his typing. She kept bursting into tears unexpectedly and rushing to the toilet. Word went round that he was a bastard. He was invited to join the staff football team.

  One Saturday night, he and his flatmates were at their local, drinking soapy beer and trying to have a discussion. Towards closing time, Bob, the MSc student, came back from the bar rubbing his hands. ‘Just met a mate, lads. Party.’ A party was the last thing William felt like but it was easier to trot along than it was to make an excuse and go home on his own. The party was in a large terraced house just round the corner from the pub. William’s heart sank as soon as he entered. He had spent his three years as a student doing this kind of thing. He was not in the mood for regression.

  They headed for the kitchen which was bright with yellow light. There was a table that groaned with the weight of booze. He helped himself to a can of lager and then left the lads poking around the bottles. There was only a handful of people around. Those not standing in the kitchen had congregated on the stairs. He stood by them listlessly for a few moments until it was clear nobody was going to speak to him.

  In the front room, there were two couples sitting in opposing corners, talking quietly. Untouched bowls of peanuts and crisps were scattered here and there, on the mantelpiece, the window sills. He went straight out again. A heavy beat was booming from the back room. Above the door was a handwritten sign which read, ‘IN HERE TO FUNK’.

  The room was stripped of furniture and the carpet had been rolled up to reveal bare boards. Large sheets of tin foil had been hung on the walls. Inside, two huge speakers were blasting out a beat which hurt his ears and vibrated beneath his feet. A bare red light bulb hung from the ceiling. It was so gloomy that at first he thought the room was empty.

  She was standing against the wall, close to an open sash window. Her body was turned away from him and she was gazing out into the darkened garden. She was holding a can of beer in one hand, clutching it to her chest. In the darkness he could just make out an untidy bunch of hair and a long, dark cardigan over leggings and boots. He walked towards her. She turned, still clutching the can. She looked him up and down. She smiled. He took the hint and fell in love.

  They saw each other two or three times a week, as often as William dared to suggest. Her name was Ellen. She was twenty-four, two years older than him (although as far as William was concerned it could have been two decades). She liked films and driving fast and take-away Chinese. She laughed easily. One night, in the bathroom of his shared flat when everyone else was away, she gave him his first blow job.

  She had her own place just off the Caledonian Road, an airy maisonette furnished by a few artfully arranged pieces of junk. It wasn’t really hers, she explained, she was just looking after it for her father. She was a production assistant for a film company. Every now and then she would disappear ‘on shoots’ and he would be rigid with jealousy until she returned. He hated her job, although he never told her so. He also hated her postman, and the man in the corner shop where she bought milk. He hated anyone or anything that claimed her time or attention, attention that by rights belonged to him.

  For four months, everything was fine. They met each other’s parents. They met each other’s friends (he hated hers). They spent every weekend together, except when she was away.

  The change began just before Christmas. He was desperate for them to spend it together. She insisted on going to stay with her family and he was hurt not to be invited. ‘It isn’t you,’ she said to him, stroking his forehead as he lay with his head in her lap. ‘It’s just, we’ve never brought boyfriends home, any of us. It would be strange, that’s all.’ Boyfriends. Boyfriends plural. I am A Boyfriend, he thought.
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  Christmas stretched into New Year. She was taking time off, she told him on the phone.

  ‘Time off from me?’

  ‘No, silly. Time off from work, everything.’

  He rang her every day.

  When she returned, he knew that things had changed. He could sense her slipping. The more she slipped, the more he clung. The more he clung, the more she slipped. Eventually he said to her one night, ‘Things aren’t working out. I think I need more space.’ To his horror she replied, ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  They clung on for another month, out of habit, picking fights with each other so they would have a concrete explanation to give their friends. All through this terrible time he had an ever growing sense of unreality. Two forces ruled his life: the inevitability of what was happening and his inability to do what he wanted most: reverse the process. At last, in a final attempt to take control, he let himself into her flat while she was out and removed his belongings. He put the key in an envelope and dropped it through the door. She rang him a week later and he told the lads to say he wasn’t in.

  For six months, he wanted to die. After that, he was merely miserable. He went back to Linda who accepted him with good grace, knowing she was no more than a consolation prize. He despised her for not being Ellen, so he treated her badly and then despised himself. On Saturdays, he went out with his flatmates and drank himself stupid. One night, he got into a fight. On the Sunday morning he woke up with a sore nose and realised that self-destruction was no fun. It was time to be honest with Linda and cut down on the booze.

  He only saw Ellen once after that. It was nearly a year after they had broken up. He was sitting on the tube, the Piccadilly line, between Green Park and Piccadilly Circus. The train had come to a stop in the middle of a tunnel. It made a few half-hearted chugging noises, then there was silence; the weird unearthly silence that comes deep underground after a great deal of noise. The passengers pulled faces, not meeting each other’s gazes. William sighed and sat back in his seat. He was thinking about the Planned Maintenance report on Shepherd’s Bush market. He wondered if he should add a sum for repair of external cladding.

  Then he heard her voice.

  ‘Shall we eat first or later?’

  All at once, he felt his stomach fold in on itself. His scalp seemed to shrink. It was her voice, so close and clear he felt tempted to lift his head and respond.

  Shall we?

  She was the only person he knew who used the word ‘shall’ so frequently. He looked around. Most of the seats were full and there were several people standing nearby. In front of him was a woman in a red coat and a man and boy in matching baseball caps. Where was she?

  To his left there was the glass panel that divided his row of seats from the area between the doors. He looked up. She was just the other side of the panel, facing away from him. Her back was pressed against it. She was inches away. He had been hurtling along a tube tunnel with her only inches away. If the train hadn’t stopped he might never have realised she was there. Her head was leaning back against the panel. Her brown curls were crushed against the glass. She was wearing the green coat she had bought in the New Year sales after that awful Christmas. ‘Shall I have the green or the blue?’ she had asked him, holding them both up, one in each hand. ‘Which one shall I have?’ He had been so terrified of giving the wrong answer he had merely shrugged.

  Then he saw, next to the crushed brown curls – just above the right shoulder of the green coat – a hand.

  The palm of the hand was pressing the glass, the fingers splayed. It was a rough hand, a large hand. It was a male hand.

  Oh God, he thought. Not this. Not now. He couldn’t bear to look and he couldn’t bear not to.

  The man had not answered her question. William listened. He knew those pauses, the slow conversations, the lingering looks. Then the man spoke. His voice was deep, with a slight lilt, Welsh, perhaps. He spoke warmly, slowly, a smile in every syllable.

  ‘Come here girl.’

  William closed his eyes. He felt sick and hot. When he opened them again he looked resolutely ahead, at the man and boy in front of him. They were both looking over at Ellen. Then the man looked down at his son and grinned. William looked at the other passengers. Several were glancing over in Ellen’s direction. Inches away from him, separated only by a panel of glass, the only woman he had ever loved was being kissed by someone else.

  All at once he was overwhelmed with fury. Why should that stupid man in front of him grin down at his son in that stupid, knowing manner? How could Ellen make a spectacle of herself like that? He wanted to stand up and say to those nearby, ‘I was with her when she bought that coat. She hasn’t told him that, I bet.’

  The train started with a jolt. The standing passengers staggered. He heard Ellen giggle.

  They hurtled down the tunnel. The noise was deafening. As they pulled into Piccadilly Circus, William was already pushing his way through the other passengers, away from Ellen and her growling Welsh companion, as far away as he could get. At the door he stumbled against a Japanese woman and kicked a large box at her feet. ‘Sorry,’ said the woman.

  He joined the other passengers jostling along the platform. Half-way to the yellow exit sign, he realised that his legs were shaking. She was there, a matter of yards behind him. Perhaps she was settling down into the seat he had left, still warm from his body. He could have spoken to her, touched her even. Now she would never know. She would carry on, her evening undisturbed when his had been torn apart. He sank into a nearby seat. The other passengers rushed by. By the time they had cleared, the train had started to move. He watched it, trying to work out when Ellen’s carriage would pass, willing Ellen to see him. The train picked up speed. The windows flashed past. The people inside became momentary images, then coloured blurs. The train disappeared into the tunnel with a rush of wind and a huge rattling sound that echoed down the empty platform.

  He sat on the plastic seat, alone. He gripped the edge of it with his hands. He thought, I am in pain. I am in so much pain I can’t stand it. All the achievements of the last few months seemed nothing. His promotion, his new car, the evening class he had started to get himself out of the flat: nothing; worthless.

  He knew then that this small incident had set him back months.

  He rose from his seat, breathing deeply. Then he turned slowly, as if he was an old man, and began the seemingly endless walk down the platform.

  It was three years before he got seriously involved with anybody else and when he did he married her. Alison was tiny, efficient, funny. She wore neat little trouser suits with high heels which would have looked old-fashioned on another woman her age but she somehow carried it off. Her hair was very short. She made jokes about looking like a pixie. Everyone (i.e. his parents) agreed; she was just right.

  He was careful not to rush things. They went out for six months and were engaged for a year. They bought a small two-bedroomed terrace in Bromley and moved in four months before the wedding. He was so swept up with the business of purchasing property that he almost forgot they were getting married as well. Luckily, Alison had it all organised. She showed him the wedding list one night and asked if there was anything he thought she had left off. He cast his eye down it: crockery, cutlery, china, a yoghurt maker (he liked yoghurt), a pine hat stand . . . He shook his head in wonder and thought, we get all this just for having sex?

  In the fortnight before the event, Alison disappeared altogether into a miasma of bridesmaids, car hire, disco equipment and unexpected aunties. He felt deserted and duly had an attack of last minute nerves. This, it turned out, had also been planned for. Alison took him out to dinner and told him she would be worried if he wasn’t having last minute doubts. The next time he saw her alone was at Gatwick airport, when they had bid the best man goodbye and gone to join the check-in queue. They were on their way to Portugal. They were man and wife.

  I have a wife, he said to himself as they handed over their passports. At the bo
arding gate, he waited for her outside the Ladies. There is my wife, he thought, as she emerged. On the plane, he said to the stewardess, ‘My wife would like some orange juice.’

  The novelty of having a wife lasted well through the first year of marriage. By then, he also had a son.

  Paul was a boisterous boy who rarely cried and played with whatever he was handed: a wooden spoon, a holepunch, a piece of lettuce. By the time he was three, it was clear that he would be handsome and good at sports. William felt overwhelmed with gratitude. Paul was exactly the sort of boy he had spent his childhood wanting to be: unanalytical, good natured, not overly clever. He felt grateful to the child. He also felt grateful to Alison. How well organised of her to produce this neat little thing for him to care for. How considerate of her to give him all this certainty. Occasionally, he went drinking with other men who complained about their wives and children; the demands, the expense. William was hard put to come up with any complaints about Alison and Paul, although he did his best.

  Sitting at his desk in John Blow House, William bent down and pushed a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, which was slung over the back of his chair. He pulled out a small leather wallet – maroon-coloured – and flipped it open. Behind a square of plastic was a picture of his wife and child. Alison was smiling brightly. Her teeth gleamed. Paul was frowning and looking over to the left. William had been there when the shots were done, at a photographer’s in Bromley High Street. Later, they had taken Paul for a burger and chips. He was up all night vomiting.

  William closed the wallet and put it back into his pocket. Then he rose and went round the office divide, to Annette’s desk. She had not yet returned. He sat down in her swivel chair and, for the want of anything useful to do, swivelled.

  He turned and looked up as she returned. Seeing him sitting at her desk, she looked slightly startled. Then she smiled. She approached and lifted up her handbag, which sat next to her computer keyboard. She opened it and replaced the hairspray and brush. As she did, her hair fell forward. He gazed at her.