The Wisdom of Crocodiles

by Paul Hoffman

  The big man was unconscious. The skinhead with the broken elbow had stopped screaming and was kneeling on the road, white with shock. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh,’ he kept repeating. Steven walked over to Anne, and pulled her out of the way. The leader stood as if completely unable to believe this turn of events. He stared at Steven like a small boy before a playground bully. He started to speak but Steven stepped between him and Anne, obscuring the blow he struck from her astonished gaze. When he turned back to her, the man was on his knees retching like an animal choking on a sharp bone. Carefully Steven opened the man’s immaculate coat and dipped into the inside pocket. He took out a wallet and his own watch, money and credit cards. He checked them, replaced the wallet then turned to Anne.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, pulling her gently towards the end of the road.

  She stopped, forcing him to turn to look at her. She stared at him, then her shoulders started shaking and her face creased into a grimace all the more terrible because there were no tears.

  He held her in his arms but he was clearly worried. ‘We have to go now.’

  She said nothing more as they walked to the Harlesden Road and hired a mini-cab from some scabby cabinette. They drove out of the decayed terraces of Harlesden in a death-trap Nissan helmed by a bewildered Moroccan who seemed uncertain as to the difference between left and right. Steven listened to the increasing rasp of Anne’s breathing until it became so loud he searched her handbag for the inhaler. As always there was the immediate response, the easing of that curious sound as if two files were rubbing together deep inside her chest. They arrived at her flat, he got her key out of her bag and in a few minutes she was sitting opposite him drinking the brandy he had poured for her.

  ‘I thought you were going to leave me.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . the knife,’ he said quietly.

  She put the glass down and gestured for him to sit beside her. Before he realised what was happening she was kissing him but it was different from the delicate touch he was used to. She forced her mouth onto his, pushing him back and pulling at his shirt. She stood up and clumsily unzipped her skirt. Failing, she gave it several hefty tugs, freed it, and the skirt fell to the ground. Watching him, she took off her shoes then rolled off her tights and knickers in one quick movement. He did nothing. She waited, still looking intently at him, her pubic mound a deep black against the white skin. She took off her blouse and bra, and stood naked in front of him. It was always an astonishing moment for Steven, even a moving one. How unprepared he always was for the first occasion, for the sight of the thin or heavy waist, the particular way the breasts hung, large or small, and never exactly what he expected. She turned and moved towards the bedroom.

  He watched her buttocks, large but muscular beneath the subcutaneous fat, stretching and shifting as she walked. He followed as she switched on the dimmest light and gestured to him to undress. He avoided her gaze as he gathered his thoughts, and when he looked up she was resting on the double bed with her back against the wall. Her legs were splayed, one on the bed, the other on the floor, and there was a curious smile on her face, a smile of welcome mixed with intense sexual excitement. It took him aback, struck by its sweetness and incongruity. There was a moment of silence as he looked into her eyes, between her legs, then back at her again. Her expression darkened and he noticed again the faint half-flush of red growing along her neck.

  He sat beside her and took her breasts in his hands. He was surprised at how heavy they were. Reaching up, she put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him. She unzipped his trousers and he pulled them off, almost falling over in his eagerness. She slipped her hand over his penis, her fingers outlining his erection beneath his shorts. To his surprise, she pulled him over with real force and pushed him on to his back. Without pausing she climbed astride him, immediately pressed herself down and then he was inside her. She pushed up and down on him faster and faster as if taken over. Her hand moved between her legs and then she came. And as she came, she began to cry, huge racking sobs beating out of her as if she would break. Amazed, he waited for the weeping to stop. He did not say anything but held her hand. Then her breathing slowed, and in two minutes she was asleep.

  Half an hour later, when he was sure he would not disturb her, he walked over to the window and looked out over the city. That a man could have a capacity for extreme violence was in no sense, he knew, an attractive quality to most women. But that a man could have such a capacity, call on it in defence of himself and of the woman he loved, yet show he was unhappy that she had witnessed this dangerous aspect of his personality, was more than all but a very few women could resist. This was the terrible paradox he could always exploit given the opportunity: the need for predictable men, providing men, for caring men who were also unpredictable, dark, and with a sharp pair of teeth.

  She moved in her sleep, and most of the sheet fell to the floor leaving her uncovered. Across the years he’d developed a deep affection for the shape of women. The endless variations on a simple theme seemed to emphasise the lack of uniformity. There was something in the contours that was pleasing to the hand, flesh and bone creating something that was neither soft nor hard. At first when he’d discovered he’d acquired this taste he had considered it unimportant. But between the necessary sex, women could feel that his touch was charged by admiration, which made them feel safe when they were in his arms. Producing an erection was something they felt that anyone could do; it followed inevitably from the way things were. His thoughtful touch was something else again: it spoke of a quality particular to them, an exploration of the difference between the perfect shape implicit in the common skeleton and the variations that emerged in thighs too large, bottoms too big, uncleavaged breasts or hair that failed in manageability or shine.

  The fact that you could borrow and graft emotions in this way gave him an insight that subsequently saved his skin. He realised that he’d been living on borrowed time, not quite grasping what was required of him if he was to stay alive.

  Some sportsmen are like that: for years they battle on in fitfully successful mediocrity until a point arrives when suddenly everything seems clear and then they play as if they’d been possessed by someone else. Steven learnt to fuel his perjuries with whatever he discovered he genuinely meant. Sometimes there wasn’t much but, to his great relief, homeopathic doses of sincerity would often do.

  She woke up.

  After they had finished making love for the second time, he fell asleep without meaning to. For a long time, resting sideways on one arm, smoking and watching over him she hardly moved at all. After a while he shifted to his side and she looked thoughtfully at his cock. It lay across his belly still swollen beyond its resting state but now it seemed most natural of all somewhere between soft and hard, the first quite ugly in a pleasant sort of way and the second always catching you unawares no matter how often seen. She continued to watch in the dim light, barely conscious of the too rapid movement of his stomach and his ribs. After a long time she fell asleep.

  The next morning Steven lay in Anne’s bed, dozing but trying not to fall asleep. Every time his eyes closed fully there was a brief pause, then they were forced slightly open so that a fraction of the whites showed through between the lids. They would hold for a short while then descend, his breathing growing heavier with his eyes until they closed and were jerked a quarter open again. In the distance he was conscious of her voice. She was part-singing, part-humming a hymn from another room. He tried to use the sound of her voice as a measure of how deeply he could allow himself to sleep, but was frustrated by her intermittent silences. Eventually the singing became so unreliable that he forced himself awake, sighing reluctantly, for he was very tired. Eyes open, he listened to the pleasant, womanly sound of her voice. He stood up and walked over in the direction from which it came.

  ‘ ’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,’ she sang softly as Steven walked towards the half-open bathroom door. ‘Hmmm, hmmm in the
valley of love and delight.’ She stopped and he heard the swish of water. She began again in a higher key. ‘Da da da dum we shan’t be ashamed . . . hmmm hmmm hmmm . . . turning, turning we come round right.’

  He could see her now through the doorway. She had her back to him and she was wearing a tank top and a pair of white cotton knickers. Her right foot was planted firmly on the wooden floor but her left was resting on the edge of the wash-basin full of soapy water. She was shaving between her legs. Every now and then she would rinse the safety razor in the basin, leaving behind white foam threaded with the black of her pubic hair. Humming a few bars of the hymn, she would stop, rinse then resume. He watched her, drawn to the intensity of her concentration, the odd changes in register of the song, and the contrast of her white skin, pulled taut in strange combinations of sinew and muscle by her stance, and her hair, which fell in straight soft lines, brushing the top of her raised thigh every time she moved.

  ‘Come in, if you’re coming,’ she said quietly.

  As Steven opened the door and walked in, she lowered her leg from the basin and raised the other. She pumped foam from a can of shaving cream onto the palm of her hand and carefully wiped it over the inside of her right thigh. She took the razor again, rinsed it in the creamy water, then handed it to him. He took it and bent his head so that he could see what he was doing. He wet the razor again and began his first stroke across the skin of her inner thigh. The hair was thick, even low down, and very black. The razor was sharp and flowed easily enough along the tight skin, culling the hair with a barely noticeable pull. He continued with immense care and concentration, the slight tension he felt in her body easing as she felt more confident of his careful touch. Her cotton knickers were daubed with the synthetic white of the foam, and as he proceeded they began to darken as the water was absorbed by the dry unbleached cotton, revealing in part the outline of the double ridge of skin beneath. She tensed again as he brought the razor to the edge of the skin hidden by the cotton but he proceeded with ever greater care, and she relaxed. Finally, he stood up straight and taking the face cloth dabbed at the foam that remained. When he had finished, she brought her foot down. ‘Take off your shirt.’

  He looked at her, puzzled, then began unbuttoning. As he took it off she squeezed more foam into her hand. ‘Turn round.’ She spread the foam along his shoulders. He heard the blade being rinsed then the sharp pull on his skin as she started. His firm muscles made it easy and in two minutes she was finished, despite the slow speed of her strokes.

  There was an intense pleasure to be had shaving someone else, the smoothing of something rough, the removal of something coarse. It was like making something new, a powerful reclamation. She wiped him clean, enjoying the touch of her fingers along the muscular body that had so surprised her the night before, the waist so slim, like a woman’s, the chest so big, like that of an animal, a bull, a horse. Along the ridge of his shoulders two or three pinpricks of blood seeped like beads of water condensing on a cold glass.

  Turning around, he kissed her, and she smiled as his fingers failed to slip under the wet elastic covering her labia. Pulling back she slipped a long fingernail between the wet elastic and her skin and pulled it away, allowing him to drag the cotton to one side. She felt the air cold on her exposed wet skin, then his hand covering her. For five minutes he did nothing but kiss her face, cheeks, lips, eyebrows, ears, chin, allowing the warmth of his hand to seep through every nerve until her breathing quickened, the skin flushed along her throat and cheeks and she was squeezing his hand so hard between her legs it began to hurt.

  Tom Clavell was a worried man. He was not just worried about one or two things at work. He was structurally worried, fundamentally ill at ease, because like so many people earning over forty thousand a year he did not realise that being permanently anxious was what he was being paid for. He also did not realise that worry doesn’t understand about clocking off. Worry is a workaholic. Worry is a body-snatcher. It had been a gradual process, so gradual that he did not even realise it. He was like that frog in the pan of water – if you put it in the pan when the water is cold and turn the heat up very slowly, it won’t even notice it’s being boiled alive. Knowing a thing or two about worry himself, Steven Grlscz was trying to get Clavell to fund an extension of his contract by the promise of an easy prize.

  ‘I’m right about this. I’m sure.’

  ‘If it was as easy as you say everyone would be doing it,’ said Clavell, dubiously.

  ‘Come on. This isn’t about research, it’s about putting two and two together. The problem’s crept up on everyone and now it’s just part of the air we breathe.’

  Clavell was softening.

  ‘You know as well as I do that there’s too much new research and not enough attempt to put together what we already know. I bet you somewhere out there there’s a cure for cancer – or baldness or weight loss or whatever.’ He paused for effect. ‘The cure for cancer would be worth a fair bit.’

  Clavell grunted. ‘Not as much as a pill that stopped people from getting fat. Why a database on stress?’

  ‘Because there’s a fair bit of research, but people aren’t really grasping the implications of what’s being found. Scientists, doctors, they’re used to the physical world, things you can measure. They don’t believe that emotions exist in the way a table exists. They like to buy solid machines to deal with solid diseases. Intervention here isn’t about expensive machines.’

  ‘We make expensive machines. In this business people hate consultants – they like to see things they can touch for their money. You can’t touch good advice.’

  ‘You can if you package it properly.’

  ‘OK, give me an example.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Grlscz reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of notes, laying them on the table in front of Clavell. They were the research findings Anne had found for him using NEMO. ‘Right.’ He pointed at a pair of graphs, the drab typography declaring their age. ‘This is Widdowson in the Lancet in 1951. It comes from research done in two orphanages in Germany just after the war.’ He pointed at the first graph. ‘This orphanage was run by a Fraülein Grun – a happy woman, warm, kind. The other was run by Fraulein Schwarz – sour, critical, hostile. They were run by the same government department. Conditions – heating, food and so on – were virtually identical. You know what the Germans are like, everything standardised and all detailed down to the yearly amount of milk for each child. They weighed and measured them every month. Look, the growth rate of the children under Grun was twice that under Schwarz.’ Grlscz put a third graph on the table. ‘In time, the nice Fraülein Grun moved on and nasty Fraülein Schwarz came to replace her. See. The growth rate of the children starts to fall dramatically. They were still eating the same amount of food. Here are the records.’

  Clavell grunted, sceptical. There could have been an infection or one of a hundred things.’

  ‘Possibly. But look at this second line. These children – four of them – were growing at a faster rate even than the kids brought up by nice Fraülein Grun.’ He paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It turns out that Schwarz wasn’t entirely heartless. These four were her special favourites. She brought them from her old orphanage.’ He turned back to the first set of graphs and pointed to a dotted line on the graph. ‘There they are, the four of them. Growing at twice the rate of the others.’

  ‘This is all a bit neat, isn’t it? Always makes me dubious.’

  ‘I’ll keep my eye out for something less persuasive.’

  ‘It’s pretty ancient.’

  That’s my point. What’s that got to do with anything? It’s solid research and it’s been lost, forgotten. If we can put it together with all the other good work that’s been forgotten . . .’ He gestured to signal the endless possibilities.

  ‘I’ll need more.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Grlscz laid the second of NEMO’s documents on the table. ‘Miami, 1986, premature baby unit.
This is . . . Field and Schanberg. They noticed that the babies were fretted over and pampered and treated with care – love even.’

  ‘Very scientific.’

  ‘Anyway, attention was poured over these babies. They also noticed there was one thing the nurses weren’t doing. So, based on their work with rats, they did this three times a day to half the babies for fifteen minutes. Not only did they grow fifty per cent faster, they were released earlier and years later were healthier than the control group. What was it?’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘They just stroked them – stroked their skin for fifteen minutes, three times a day. For all the tender loving care, the nurses hardly ever picked them up.’ Grlscz handed Clavell two closely typed pages. ‘These are Purcell’s calculations of how much money stroking underweight babies could save every year. That’s just in the USA alone.’

  Clavell looked straight at the bottom line. ‘A billion dollars?’

  ‘The figures are rough but it’s there or thereabouts. It’s based on a federal report from 1987.’ Grlscz carefully checked in his notes. It was important to throw as much dull science into the ring as possible. ‘Here it is: Neonatal Intensive Care for Low Birth Weight Infants: Costs and Effectiveness. Health and Technology Case Study 38.’

  Clavell looked through the numbers for several minutes. ‘Let me think about it,’ he said at last. ‘We’d better be going.’