Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  As they left the house he said, ‘Why don’t I run you all the way to work? There’s time. I’m not in any hurry.’

  Annette hesitated. It was exactly a week since the London Bridge bomb. She had commuted as usual for the previous two days. She had stood on the footbridge at Hither Green and watched the trains coming down the line. On both occasions, a picture had occurred: the people who had run for the eight seventeen that Wednesday, trotting down the platform to catch the train that would bring them in on Platform 3. ‘The station will be fine,’ she said, but her voice was uncertain. He glanced over. She had not told him about the bombing. He would have comforted her, like William had, and that would have seemed more of a betrayal than the sex had been.

  ‘I don’t have to be in Eltham until twelve,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s miles out of your way.’

  He shrugged, and started the engine.

  As they pulled up at the front of John Blow House, Keith said, ‘So this is it, Girlie? You’re a pretty grand sort of secretary now.’

  ‘Office Manager,’ Annette replied, ‘if you want to be precise.’

  He turned to her. She was undoing her seatbelt. He leant towards her and put one hand over hers as she struggled with the clasp. ‘Are you angry with me?’ he said.

  She looked down the street. Jefferson Worth was walking towards their car. He turned and bounded up the steps without noticing them. She realised she was disappointed that it had not been William who had passed by as a strange man pulled up with her in his car at five past nine in the morning.

  Keith reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘You know you can call me anytime, don’t you?’ he said. ‘If things get bad.’ This was too much. If William were to walk past now there would be no mystery. A man tucking her hair behind her ear could only be another lover.

  ‘I’m not angry Keith, honest,’ she said, speaking quickly as she turned to get her handbag from the back seat. ‘But I was serious when I said it was the last time.’

  He let her go with good grace. ‘You’re a beautiful girl,’ he said as she opened the door to climb out. As she turned to slam it shut behind her he called out, ‘Don’t forget what I said!’

  Joan looked up as Annette walked past her desk. She watched her as she put down her handbag and removed her coat. Annette said, ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning,’ Joan replied.

  Annette looked over.

  Joan rose from her seat and came and stood next to Annette. ‘In okay today?’

  Annette nodded.

  Joan reached out and pulled over a typist’s chair to the left of Annette’s desk. She sat down and pressed her knees together. ‘You know I’m off on holiday next week?’

  Annette sat down. Joan looked slightly anxious.

  ‘Well, I know it’s only a week,’ Joan said, ‘but I thought I had better talk to you before I went in case anything happened while I was away. I mean, about Helly.’

  Annette pulled a face. ‘I know. I’ve been wondering about that too. I thought Richard had it all sorted out. I haven’t spoken to him recently but last time I did I had the impression she would be gone by now. It’s all very awkward. I don’t think he realises.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Joan said. ‘I wasn’t too happy from the start and now I really don’t think, well, she’s been walking around and we’ve been talking to her. She doesn’t act like someone who’s nicked anything. I mean, it’s not as if she’s being extra friendly or anything, she’s just as bad-tempered as ever and her time-keeping hasn’t improved. If it was you, wouldn’t you be on your best behaviour?’ Annette pulled a face and shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ Joan continued, ‘I don’t understand. It’s over two weeks since my money went missing. If he really thought it was her she would have been out by now. And I don’t know about all this doing it quietly. Why should he do her any favours? What’s in it for him?’

  Annette put her elbows on the table and leant forward, resting her chin in her hands. ‘Oh I don’t know, I don’t really think it’s up to us.’

  Joan looked at her. ‘I’m sorry Annette. But it is.’

  Annette sat back up. In the whole time she had worked with Joan, Joan had never once disagreed with her or tried to alter her opinion about anything.

  ‘We can’t let it happen as if it was an accident and just hope we got it right. If she didn’t nick my money then she shouldn’t get the sack. If Richard wants to sack her on other grounds, then that’s up to him.’ Not long ago, Joan thought, I passed a child dying in the road; and it seemed wrong to be seeing it. There was nothing I could have done, then. But that isn’t the point. ‘When she took you home after the bomb,’ Joan asked, ‘didn’t you get a feel for it? Didn’t you want to ask her?’

  Annette tried to smile. Perhaps she should have asked Helly about Joan’s money when they were in Catford. All she had been thinking about was William.

  ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join?’

  Joan started. Annette sat back quickly. Helly had spoken as she walked past them on her way to the coffee machine. Her tone had not been pleasant.

  ‘Did she hear?’ Annette asked softly when Helly was out of sight. Joan pulled a face. Annette stood up. ‘Go round to Richard’s office and see if he’s in. Then come over to the coffee.’

  The coffee machine was in a small alcove in the corner of the office. It was cordoned out of sight by an office divide on one side and a huge cabinet with supplies on the other. Helly was pouring a jug of water into the filter machine. She was still wearing her coat and had her bag slung over one shoulder. She glanced up as Annette joined her, then returned to what she was doing.

  ‘Helly, look . . .’

  ‘What have I done now?’

  Joan stepped around the divide. ‘Coast is clear,’ she said to Annette.

  ‘What you told me last week, about Richard . . . is it true?’ Annette asked Helly.

  ‘What?’ said Joan.

  Helly turned. She looked from Annette to Joan and back again. ‘Yes it’s true. Why would I make it up for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘What?’ repeated Joan.

  ‘Helly thinks,’ Annette said, ‘that Richard is taking bribes from contractors.’

  ‘Helly knows,’ Helly said. ‘Helly has proof.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joan. ‘I’ve known that for years.’ Annette and Helly looked at her. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Joan said. ‘Those three hour lunches? The way he gets all officious about tender procedure as if he really cares about everything being above board. The way he’s so obsessed with paperwork. The surveyors can’t even blow their noses without sending Richard a memo about it. It’s obvious. He’s covering his tracks.’

  Helly was open-mouthed. ‘You never said.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to report it to anyone?’ Annette asked.

  Joan frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Annette said, looking from one to the other.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake Annette,’ Helly hissed, ‘you’re so bloody straight you think everybody else is as straight as you. It’s no big deal. Half the bloody managers here are on the take. They’re in the business of awarding expensive contracts. What planet are you on?’

  ‘I don’t think that just because . . .’

  ‘You don’t like the idea because you feel bloody daft for not having noticed it yourself.’

  ‘You said you had proof,’ Joan said to Helly.

  Helly hesitated. ‘Well, that’s what I told him.’

  Annette stared at her. ‘You mean Richard knows that you know?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  Annette rolled her eyes. ‘Helly, this explains a few things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like why Richard is about to get you sacked, that’s what.’

  ‘What?’

  Joan raised the palm of her hand to indicate they should be quiet. Then she stepped back out of the
alcove and peered around the office. ‘Girls,’ she said, as she stepped back, ‘people are starting to wander around and Richard is going to be here any minute. Can we all get away for lunch at the same time?’ She was looking at Annette.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘Depends who’s around. I could get the switchboard to put my calls through to Lydia. I minded her phone last week when they all went out for her engagement.’

  ‘Is The Green Man safe?’

  Annette shook her head. ‘We’ll have to take a walk somewhere. Meet up separately.’

  ‘What for?’ said Helly.

  ‘Because,’ Joan replied, ‘it is time we all swapped notes.’

  Bob Appleton had taken up découpage. Joanna had given him a kit for Christmas but it had taken him some months to get around to it. He had a lot of jigsaw puzzles to finish first. Until they were put together, they could not be taken apart. Right through January and February there had been half a Spanish galleon in the dining room, a jagged 1950s Morris Oxford on top of his dresser and the frame and one corner of a flock of puffins on an ice floe lying in the corner of the bathroom. He had taken to putting the odd piece in place while he ate dinner, brushed his hair or went to the toilet. Joanna threatened to scramble the lot if they weren’t done by the end of March and had hidden his new toy until the jigsaws were packed away. It was such a relief when they were completed and could be broken up.

  He was in their bedroom in Rosewood Cottage, the electric fire on full to dry out the pictures more quickly. Next door, his mother-in-law Mrs Hawthorne slept. Downstairs, Joanna was watching a video of last Sunday’s South Bank Show, some cello player she had taken a shine to.

  The pleasures of découpage were proving elusive. The picture was done for you, after all. All you had to do was cut it out and lacquer it onto the rather tacky plastic plaques the kit provided. There wasn’t enough art in it for Bob. He preferred the shrinking pictures Joanna bought him last year, the ones you painted onto a clear plastic sheet. You put the sheet into the top of a hot oven for twenty minutes and it duly shrank. Lo and behold, a perfect miniature. He had done one of Rosewood Cottage which now hung at the top of the stairs. Only problem was, you had to have your nose on it to see it.

  Bob’s current découpage picture was of a group of three horses all running out of the frame, towards the viewer. The first he had tried was of a bunch of flowers, blossoms bursting three-dimensionally. He liked the horses more. They were slightly scary – eyeballs all shiny and lips pulled back to reveal unnaturally large teeth. We can call it the three horses of the apocalypse, he thought. That would give us war, famine and pestilence – what was the fourth one called? We can nail it to the front door, as a warning to all staff from the Capital Transport Authority.

  After he had finished lacquering, he left it to dry and went downstairs to make a cup of coffee.

  In the kitchen, he found Joanna. She was crying. He went over to the table, drew up a chair and sat down next to her. He took her hand and squeezed it. She did not respond. He squeezed again, then said, ‘The South Bank Show was that bad, huh?’

  ‘Shut up you old fool,’ she said moistly.

  He sat beside her without speaking. Eventually, she withdrew her hand and fumbled in her apron pocket for a tissue. He offered his hankie.

  As she blew her nose she said, ‘I don’t think I can stand that poisonous old woman any longer, I really don’t.’ Bob rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘She knows we’re just waiting for her to die,’ Joanna continued. ‘She knows we want Helly to move in. She doesn’t enjoy living, she’s as miserable as sin. She’s just keeping it up to spite us, that’s all.’ She finished wiping her face and looked at Bob’s hankie. ‘Good God, what have you been doing into this? It’s disgusting! Guess what she just said to me. I took her tea and she said, out of the blue, “No wonder Suzanne ran off with that good-for-nothing. She never got a decent cup of tea out of you. Mind you, what’s a good-for-nothing husband when you’ve had parents like you two.” I wasn’t going to say anything, I wasn’t going to rise to it, you know what she’s like. Then she said . . .’ Joanna drew breath. ‘She said, “Maybe you two messed around with her, like it says in the papers these days. Something must have happened. Maybe you two interfered with her when I wasn’t looking”.’

  Suzanne was their daughter and Helly’s mother. Somehow, she and Joanna had never got on, not even when Suzanne was small. At the age of fifteen, she had dropped out of school. By seventeen, she was married. By eighteen, she was a mother. By twenty-one, she was divorced. Helly had never known her father, although the odd birthday present arrived. She had got to know her mother’s friends, though. And her mother’s drinking habits.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Bob said, ‘last month your mum accused us of putting peppercorns in the raspberry jam and blocking up the outlet in her bedroom in the hope she’d be poisoned by the fumes from an electric fan heater. She’s mad as a hatter.’

  ‘But did we, Bob? Maybe we did.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Interfere with her. Suzanne. Not in the way she means, but she’s got a point, hasn’t she?’ Bob shook his head. ‘Our daughter doesn’t give a damn about us,’ Joanna continued. ‘Here we are, all smug with our little cottage and our pensions and our Italian cooking, and we think we’re one better than all the other people like us that we know because they don’t cook Italian. But luckily we have my mad mother upstairs just to remind us when we get too smug. Our daughter thinks we’re crap.’

  Bob leant forward and took both of Joanna’s hands in his. Outside, it was gloomy and dark. The kitchen was cold. ‘But our granddaughter loves us,’ he insisted gently. ‘Nobody gets everything right. Granted, something went wrong with Suzanne and we’ll never know for sure whether it was us or just her. But we’ve got Helly. And she’ll come to live with us some time soon and that’ll get her away from Suzanne and then we can start to make up for all the things that have gone wrong.’

  Joanna sat back in her chair and sighed. Then she turned to her husband. ‘Maybe it’s too late.’

  Bob shook his head but did not argue any further. They sat for a few minutes, holding hands. He ran his thumb over the back of her gnarled fist. The purple veins, the brown age spots, the yellowed fingernails – he knew her hands better than he knew his own. She had developed a touch of arthritis in the right one last year, just a touch, and he had been able to see it in her fingers even before the pain had begun, before Joanna knew herself.

  From upstairs came the dull thump of Mrs Hawthorne’s stick on the ceiling. ‘She’ll be wanting the toilet,’ said Bob, getting to his feet.

  ‘Oh let her wet the bed.’

  He kissed the top of Joanna’s head. ‘If we could send her down the launderette, my little chicken, don’t you think I would?’

  Upstairs, Mrs Hawthorne was half out of bed already. When the door opened she frowned. ‘Oh, it’s you. Where’s Joanna?’

  ‘Busy,’ Bob replied firmly as he went to help her up.

  ‘I don’t like you taking me to the lavvy. It’s not right.’ He ignored her. ‘You’ll be doing my sponge bath next, mind you you’d probably make a better job of it than that daughter of mine. Why’s she busy?’

  ‘We’ve been doing things, things we like doing,’ Bob explained patiently as he inched her towards the bedroom door. ‘She’s been watching telly and I’ve been doing a new picture.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Horses.’ Then he added, a little grimly, ‘I’ll show you later.’

  ‘Horses!’ the old lady spat, as if he had said lepers. Mrs Hawthorne thought that large animals carried diseases and that horses were – adding malice to malady – psychic.

  ‘Yes, horses. And by the way Mum, I think it might be a nice idea if you don’t go on about Suzanne. It upsets Joanna, you know that.’

  ‘Upset? Upset?’ They were still only half-way to the door. ‘She’s not upset. It’s just her time of the month, that’s all. Always made her blub
, ever since she was thirteen. Her father got so fed up he belted her for blubbing once.’

  ‘She doesn’t have periods any more,’ Bob said evenly, as they neared the door. ‘She’s sixty-six years old.’

  Mrs Hawthorne leant forward, nearly tipping, and grabbed onto the door handle. When it had been gained, she shook Bob off her elbow and paused for a rest. Bob stood next to her while she caught her breath. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the back of her pyjama trousers, wondering if they would make it to the bathroom in time.

  ‘Don’t know what all the fuss is about periods these days,’ Mrs Hawthorne grated on, catching her breath. ‘The curse? Load of nonsense. Have you seen the adverts? Things you stick up you, things you stick on. How stupid can you get? In my day, we used cake.’

  Bob returned to the kitchen half an hour after he had left. Joanna was still there. She had lit a cigarette. They had both given up years ago but kept a packet in the back of the kitchen drawer, for emergencies. Bob sat down next to her and passed a hand over his face. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘She’s only hanging on to spite us. Give me a fag.’

  Joanna passed the packet over. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know, but we need a night out. I’ll go over to Jill’s tonight and arrange something. A Wednesday like we did last time – next week or the one after if they’re busy.’

  ‘Last time we had that fight over dominoes.’

  ‘Well we’ll play something else then, anything. Cards. Scrabble. Group sex.’

  ‘Scrabble,’ said Joanna.

  ‘What if he’d called your bluff?’ Annette asked.

  Helly shrugged. ‘Then I’d have been stuffed.’ They were sitting in the back of a coffee bar on Horseferry Road. They all had tea. Annette had said she wasn’t hungry but, once in a while, helped herself to Joan’s plate of chips. Helly had a piece of gateau which she was chopping into large chunks with a fork. ‘But if he’d got it wrong,’ she continued, ‘he would have lost a hell of a lot more than me.’ She stopped chopping her cake. She looked down at it. Joan and Annette watched her. Helly looked back up. Annette thought, she is only seventeen.