Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  William pulled the duvet back up and lay on his back. Annette’s sheets were a thick, crisp, lemon-coloured cotton, always spotlessly clean. The only items of furniture in her bedroom were a wooden wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers. On an unpainted shelf next to the bed there was a plain blue lamp. Through the bathroom door he could hear the small tinkling sound of urinating, then the noise of the flush and the tap running.

  As she came back into the room, he lifted back the duvet for her to climb under and snuggle down, to get warm again. ‘How long have you got?’ she asked as they embraced.

  ‘Ages,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to go to the office this afternoon. Ages.’

  They were quiet for a while, their cheeks pressed together. Outside, there was the gentle distant roar of an aeroplane passing overhead, its approach melting without pause into its departure. The neighbour’s dog barked once, then was silent.

  ‘What’s she like?’ Annette said. Her voice was quiet in the stillness. Neither of them moved. There was a pause.

  ‘Physically, or do you mean character?’ said William.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Well . . . she’s very short, with short hair. Pretty. Very organised, I suppose. Dark hair, well not really dark, brown. Contact lenses, I don’t know, what else?’

  He shifted slightly in her arms. Annette could tell he was becoming uneasy. She regretted bringing it up, but now she had, she knew she must see it through. She had to nudge him into saying something disloyal about his wife. He owed her that small victory.

  ‘So what’s she like?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know do I?’ William drew back slightly. They looked at each other. He gave a half-smile, as if he had decided to get through this with an off-the-cuff remark. His expression was a little mean. ‘She’s the sort of woman who always has a tissue. Whatever the situation, you can guarantee she’ll have a tissue.’

  Annette returned his smile briefly, then pulled him back towards her so that he would not have the chance to examine her face. So am I, she thought. Oh God, so am I. Why couldn’t William’s wife be a sloven or a slut? Or just a party girl; that would have done. Loud-mouthed. Slightly fat. But no, she was a tidy, efficient young woman. She was a good mother. She rinsed the dishes. She always had a tissue. Like me, Annette thought, she is just like me. Then she corrected herself. No – I am like her.

  William had done what she wanted but she still felt annoyed with him. So she said, quite brutally, ‘Helly knows about us you know.’

  He drew back again. She could tell that he was concerned but trying not to show it. ‘You told her?’ he asked, and his voice was careful.

  ‘No. She guessed. She said it was blindingly obvious – I had no idea – just from the way we were, then the way we changed. You wouldn’t believe it, really. I don’t suppose we’re as clever as we think.’

  William sighed. He rolled over onto his back and Annette turned and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Does that worry you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  They fell quiet again. His honesty had made speech redundant. If he had tried to pretend he didn’t care then she could have caused a scene. She could have asked if he was embarrassed about her and said, What do you think it’s like for me? She suddenly smiled to herself. He hasn’t done this before, she thought. He hasn’t got the lines right yet. She was glad.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked reluctantly.

  She was satisfied now. ‘No, it’s alright,’ she said.

  They lay, holding each other.

  Gradually, the sky darkened. The clouds grew more dense. ‘No curtain,’ said William. ‘Doesn’t the light disturb you in the summer?’

  ‘No I like it, look,’ Annette replied, pointing up at the skylight. ‘It’s better than the telly.’ She turned onto her back with William’s arm still underneath her neck, so that they could lie side by side and watch. The clouds impacted together, rolling from white to grey. A breeze whisked underneath the skylight and rushed over to them before making a mad charge back out again. William shivered dramatically.

  Annette giggled. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Can you hear?’ They listened. There was the distant meowing of a cat, cowering somewhere from the coming storm. ‘It’s next door’s I think. It’s really funny. Sometimes when the skylight is closed, it walks around my roof, over the window. I’m lying here and I might be thinking about something else, not really looking, then a bit of me thinks, that’s weird, there’s a cat walking across the sky.’

  ‘Let’s wait until it gets close,’ said William, pulling his arm around Annette and snuggling up to her. ‘Let’s wait until it’s on the bottom of the skylight, then we can sneak up and give the window a good yank.’

  Annette spluttered. ‘We’d send it into orbit.’

  There was a scattering noise across the window. ‘What’s that?’ William asked.

  ‘Sycamore pods, from the trees,’ Annette replied. ‘The wind must be up.’

  They heard a low distant grumble of thunder. The air in the room seemed tight. ‘It’s really building up for a big one,’ William said.

  Suddenly, a crash of lightning slashed open the air and filled the room with instantaneous, brilliant white light. The skylight banged open. They both jumped, grabbing at each other, and Annette gave a small yelp.

  ‘God! God, that was close . . .’ said William.

  Annette jumped up and pushed the skylight shut, then leapt back onto the bed. Then they both sat, naked and clutching, and watched as the first few spots of rain on the window became a clattering deluge that danced against the glass.

  ‘I love storms,’ breathed Annette. William turned her face with his hand. Their mouths met. They fell back onto the bed.

  They kissed frantically for several minutes, then they lay and watched the rain. Annette’s arms hung around William’s neck. Once in a while, she kissed his shoulder. He stroked the inside of one of her elbows with a finger.

  ‘When I was working at Hammersmith,’ he said, ‘there was a storm like this, one afternoon. Worse than this, not much rain but thunder and lightning. Amazing thing. Someone was nearly killed. It was a woman, one of the managers. She was sitting at her desk working when she decided to go and get a coffee. While she was out of her office, a bolt of lightning came through the window, the sixth floor I think. It melted the legs of her chair onto the floor and blew up the computer on her desk. Just imagine—’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It was in the papers. Just imagine. If she hadn’t gone for the coffee . . .’

  ‘You know what that’s like?’ said Annette. ‘It’s like a god saying, watch it. Don’t you think?’ William shifted slightly. Annette pulled her arm out from underneath his head and they re-adjusted to a more comfortable position. ‘It’s like him saying, okay, I’ve let you off this time, but I can get you any time I like. In the office. At home. Anywhere I want. All I have to do is this. So watch it.’

  William did not reply immediately. The silence was serious. We are both thinking about London Bridge, William thought, but neither of us wants to bring it up. We want to be alone together. He said, ‘Yes.’

  Suddenly, Annette rolled on top of him, grinning. She picked up his left arm and held it above his head. ‘No one can get you though, William Bennett, because I’ve got you first.’

  He brought his other arm around her neck and held her tightly. ‘Help,’ he said. ‘Someone help.’

  They held each other very hard and kissed, very softly.

  As their mouths parted, he buried his lips against her left ear. ‘Annette . . .’ he whispered into it, and the words tickled. ‘I love you Annette.’

  Richard was the sort of man who liked to reward loyalty. Annette had always been a good secretary, although a little straight-laced. Ideally, he would have liked somebody slightly more flirtatious, someone who met his guests at the lift and flattered them as she walked them down to his office. But she had a good telephone manner and, most importantly, was bo
th unsuspicious and trustworthy. These, he knew, were assets. There was plenty of the other sort.

  He spoke to her at home the day after the bombing and told her to take the rest of the week as sick leave. He would get a temp in for Friday. After he put down the phone he went round to Joan and gave her a pound. ‘Send Annette a card,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that’s a nice idea,’ said Joan, looking at the pound.

  ‘Can you ring Susan from the agency?’ Richard said. ‘I want someone for Friday. They’ve got to have audio. Make sure it’s not that mad Australian they sent when Annette had the flu.’

  It was a mad New Zealander instead. Tara typed at ninety words a minute and talked at roughly twice that rate: simultaneously. While she whizzed her way through a pile of specifications she told Joan about her fiancé Adam, their flat in Dalston, her mother’s sleepwalking problem and his father’s kleptomania. Occasionally Joan said, ‘Yes’ or, ‘Really?’ By lunchtime, she had a headache.

  Joan liked Antipodeans. They worked harder than British temps and didn’t smoke. What she didn’t like was the way their voices went up at the end of half their sentences as if they were always asking questions.

  ‘It caused a real problem when she was younger?’ Tara was saying. ‘She used to walk around the house at night? One night, she goes downstairs and Grandma wakes up and there’s a smell of burning? Grandma goes down to the kitchen? There’s Ma, apparently, standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of milk in her nightie, still fast asleep, and there’s smoke coming out of the oven?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Tara said, nodding. ‘She was baking the budgie.’

  Helly came round the corner and dropped a pile of papers on Joan’s desk. Helly liked having temps in. It was the only time she was not the most junior member of staff. ‘If Tara finishes those specs maybe she could do some filing,’ she said to Joan.

  Joan looked up, trying to manage a frown to indicate that she disapproved of this kind of one-upmanship. Helly winked.

  Tara was saying, ‘Of course my fiancé reckons we should have an orchard instead of a sheep farm? Then we could call it Adam’s Apples.’

  As Helly turned away, Joan said, ‘William was looking for you a minute ago.’

  ‘I thought he was at Fairlop.’

  ‘He’s just got back.’

  Helly wandered down the office. One of the other surveyors was celebrating a birthday and his desk was decorated with cards and balloons, but because it was early Friday afternoon, nobody was around.

  She sat on William’s chair. On his desk was a memo from Jefferson Worth in Commercial. She glanced at it: As a result of our client’s structural difficulties, it is essential that this Survey of Dilapidations is carried out as soon as possible. May I suggest . . . Ah well, Helly thought, perhaps there are worse things than being the office dogsbody. At least I don’t have to read that kind of shit.

  ‘Helly?’

  William was standing next to her.

  ‘Yeah?’ she asked.

  He sat down on the edge of his desk and scratched his ear. He seemed ill at ease. ‘Annette told me about you getting her home on Wednesday. She said you were really good, looked after her.’

  Helly smiled. I bet that’s not all she told you, she thought.

  William smiled back. ‘I just wanted to say thank you and, well, thanks.’

  Helly picked up a pencil from William’s desk and began to play with it, tapping it against the edge of the desk and leaning back in his seat. ‘William . . .’

  ‘Mmm?’

  She tossed the pencil back onto the desk, grinning. ‘Look, you don’t need to worry. I know how to keep my gob shut. Nobody’s talking about you two. It isn’t common knowledge.’

  William pulled a face, not unlike a Father Christmas with an empty sack. Her directness was clearly not his style. ‘Oh, well that’s nice to know. I suppose. Thanks.’

  Helly stood up. ‘Relax,’ she said, ‘you pair of egotists. People always think the same way. It’s so important to you, you reckon it must be at least a little bit important to everybody else. It isn’t. No one cares.’

  Richard was coming back from a very nice lunch with a new architect called Brownson. They had been to an oyster bar near the station. Mr Brownson was very keen for work.

  As he rounded the corner of the office, he saw Helly sitting at William’s desk and William perched beside her, looking down and smiling.

  Richard turned and walked back towards the lift. He would go down to the floor below, walk across and come up the stairwell. He didn’t want them to know he had seen them together.

  Of course. Now it all fell into place. How stupid of him not to have thought of it. That little tart didn’t have the technical knowledge to work out what was happening with the contractors or Rosewood Cottage. Richard had seen the expression on William’s face. He had been looking down at her as she leant back in his chair, her head thrown back. Richard knew that nervous, male look. He had used it himself a hundred times.

  In the lift, he leant back against the wall, his arms folded, pursing his lips. Good, he thought. Now he knew everything. Now he could make his move.

  Everything they said about Alison Bennett was true. She was trim and efficient and intelligent. She had been good at her job – a personnel assistant – and now she was a good mother to William’s child. She also worked part-time in a local shop, a couple of hours here and there to help them out, when Paul was at nursery, and she was learning French.

  She also knew that her husband was confused. William was the sort of man who was unusually kind to the people around him when he was miserable, because he felt guilty about resenting their happiness. When she had first identified this trait, not long after they were engaged, it had thrown her a bit. Whenever he did anything kind or pleasant, she found herself looking for the hidden motive. After a while, she began to love him for it, although she trusted him less. Alison had married with her eyes open. She was that kind of woman.

  William had been confused for some weeks now but then it was March, a confusing month, she always found. She was going to give him another fortnight before she sat down and tried to work it all out.

  She was saying this to herself on a Thursday afternoon. Paul had thrown a tantrum for a solid half an hour, then fallen asleep. When she had explained to him that she could not mend his favourite truck he had told her he hated her. He loved his Daddy, but he hated her. She had resisted the temptation to say, fine, I’m not exactly wild about you either at the moment. After he fell asleep, she read a Sunday magazine; a few moments of peace.

  When the doorbell rang, she went to the front door still holding the magazine. She opened it a fraction.

  A man stood on the step. He was dressed in overalls and wearing a heavy jacket with the collar turned up. ‘It’s on the front here,’ he said. ‘Do you want it round the back?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Alison. She looked past him. Parked on the pavement was a workman’s van. Music tinkled from the cab, where a young man in the passenger seat was waiting for the older one. Then she saw that on the small square patch of grass in front of the house was a pile of wooden slats wrapped partially in tarpaulin and bound with rope. The top slat appeared to be a door of some sort.

  ‘Do you want it round the back?’ the man asked again. ‘Only it’s a bit parky and I’m in a hurry.’ He was already backing away down the path.

  ‘What is it?’ Alison called after him.

  ‘Garden shed,’ the man responded, backing away towards the gate.

  ‘What?’

  The man paused, pulling a face. He fumbled around in one of the pockets of his big jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Bennett,’ he said. ‘Number fifteen.’

  Alison nodded.

  The man raised his hand in farewell, as if that settled the matter.

  After the van had pulled away, Alison turned back into the hall, put down the magazine and slipped on a pair of loafers. She went out into the garden.
Why on earth had William bought a garden shed? They already had one.

  She parted the tarpaulin slightly. The door on the top had new chrome hinges, shiny bright. It looked like a nice shed.

  She went back into the house, shaking her head. Now she knew for sure. Something was up.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Send it back? Send it back?’

  ‘Yes for God’s sake. You heard. Send it back. We don’t need a garden shed. We don’t want a garden shed. What’s more we don’t want to have to pay for it.’

  Alison closed her eyes. She sighed, very slowly. ‘William, where the hell are we supposed to send it back to? We don’t know where it came from. There was no delivery note, nothing.’

  William paused before crying out, ‘Well for God’s sake, how could you let somebody just dump a shed in our garden without asking for a delivery note!’

  ‘Maybe it’s a prize draw, maybe it’s a mistake – I don’t know. It’d be stupid to throw it away. It’s much better than the one we’ve got.’

  ‘You chose it, not me.’

  ‘Yes, William, I know.’ Alison’s voice was strained. Her teeth were gritted.

  At this point, the sound of Paul calling out from upstairs became audible. ‘Mar-mee! Mar-mee!’

  Alison sighed again, shook her head and left the kitchen. William picked up the newspaper that was on the table in front of him and threw it on the floor.

  Arthur Robinson put down the phone. It was nighttime at Robinson Builders. His operatives had gone home. He was working late, alone, in the rickety pre-fab he used as his office. The only sound was the wind outside and the companionable burble of his gas heater. He was tired. He was stiff. His Opal Fruits were finished and all that remained was an unchewable, brightly coloured scattering of wrappers. Life seemed grim.