Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  After a day or so, the mare began to sicken. The wound putrefied. Benny fought to save her but within a week the battle was lost. Señor de Angelinos sent two campesinos round to break Benny’s legs, but he was out playing draughts at the Hotel Colon with his neighbour’s uncle. His brother Luis was in, so the campesinos broke his legs instead. Benny left town.

  When he first came to England he had sought work in the country, but the farmers thought he was a gypsy. Hunger forced him to London. Arthur Robinson had tripped over him as he huddled in a railway arch in Kennington. Benny had stared up at the fat white man and fought with his pride. He had not eaten for three days and was filthy; still he could not bring himself to beg. Arthur Robinson had looked down at the small proud Venezuelan and seen another opportunity to be adored. He took Benny into his yard, let him build the igloo, gave him work, saved his life. Benny was the loyal type. While Benny was alive, Arthur Robinson could have no breathing enemies.

  Now Benny was in another railway arch, this time in Deptford. He was at the end of Sutton Street. He was watching Rosewood Cottage. Benny did not know why Mr Robinson wanted the cottage watched, but it was something to do with the smart-faced man who turned up once in a while. Benny could read faces. The smart man looked at him and thought that because he didn’t speak he couldn’t understand. Benny’s English was fluent but in this wet grey city he had generally found it wise to keep that to himself. Benny sighed and withdrew a tube of Smarties from his pocket. He flipped the plastic lid and tipped the last remaining few into his mouth. Eating sweets was a habit he had copied from Mr Robinson. It was ruining his teeth but visiting a dentist was out of the question. Benny tossed the tube back into the arch disconsolately, peering out at the deserted street. It was windy and damp, although the rain had stopped. Benny sighed again. He had been in England too long. It was an armpit of a country. An armpit.

  Benny had been in the railway arch since four o’clock. His vigil was rewarded just after six p.m. A girl was strolling down Sutton Street, towards him. He withdrew into the shadows of the arch. She had to be visiting the cottage. There was no other reason to come down Sutton Street, unless you had a body to bury. The girl had a bag slung over her shoulder but it wasn’t big enough for a body and she was too small to carry one anyway. She was wearing a brown mini-skirt and a huge grey cardigan that swamped her and made her seem dwarfish. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a long bunch that curled down her back. She was chewing something.

  Benny watched the girl as she approached the cottage. She paused on the step and fumbled in her bag. Then she pulled out a bunch of keys and let herself in.

  ‘Come on you girls,’ Bob said, ‘get out of my kitchen.’ He eased past Helly who was seated on a tall stool by the fridge.

  ‘What are you cooking?’ she asked.

  ‘Fettucine al dogshit. Now get out of my way.’

  Joanna tugged at Helly’s sleeve. ‘Come on Poops, let the Maestro do his stuff or we’ll be sending you out to the Deptford Tandoori.’

  Helly and Joanna took their wine into the sitting room. They settled on the sofa and sipped for a moment, the silence companionable.

  After a while, Helly asked casually, ‘Had any more visits from the Transport Authority?’

  Joanna levelled her gaze at her granddaughter. ‘You know damn well we have. Don’t you?’

  Helly looked up, wide-eyed. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Joanna chuckled. ‘Listen, Poops. Your mum may fall for that but you can’t fool your mad old granny. We had some young fella round here last Wednesday telling us it’s been suspended. Indefinitely.’

  ‘Just suspended? Not cancelled?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. He said suspended in a way that sounded like cancelled but I wouldn’t trust those buggers as far as I could throw ’em. He said his name was Bennett. Do you know him?’

  Helly nodded. ‘William. New guy. Gets the dirty work.’

  Joanna put down her wine glass and leant forward. She rested both her hands on Helly’s knees. ‘Poops, have you been up to something?’

  Helly bit her lip.

  ‘Look, just tell me this. Is this going to get you in trouble? I don’t care what you do as long as you’re okay. We’re grateful of course, but the last thing I want is you getting the boot.’

  ‘Gran, if I was up to something, don’t you think I’d cover myself?’ Helly took a sip of wine and sat back in her seat.

  Joanna shook her head. ‘You’re a clever kid. Always were. But sometimes it isn’t enough to be clever, Poops. There are some people out there you can outwit and do you know what they’ll do? Turn round and smack you in the gob, that’s what. I know you’ve had it tough with your mum, but you don’t know yet how tough some men can be . . .’

  ‘Oh Gran . . .’

  ‘I want you to promise me one thing. Just this one.’ Helly rolled her eyes. ‘Now listen, for once. Just promise me this: if you get in an argument with someone, you’ll do it somewhere public, okay?’

  ‘Alright, Gran.’

  ‘I mean it love, please.’ Joanna’s face had become tense and sad. She leant forward. ‘Just don’t let yourself get cornered, that’s all.’

  Helly put down her glass and grasped Joanna’s hands in hers. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  Joanna smiled. ‘You know as soon as your great-gran pops off you can have her room, don’t you?’

  Helly returned the smile. ‘Oh come on. Nan Hawthorne isn’t going anywhere.’

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  Helly bent and picked up her glass. ‘Same as ever.’

  ‘Joanna!’ Bob’s voice called from the kitchen.

  ‘What?’ Joanna called back.

  Bob appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a plastic apron printed with the images of a lacy bra and lacy pair of knickers. He was holding a large wooden pepper mill. ‘Where did you put the sun-dried tomatoes?’

  The next morning, Helly woke on her grandparents’ sofa. She would have walked to New Cross and got the bus, but it was dark by the time they had finished Bob’s fettucine and Joanna had insisted she stay the night. She had slept in one of Bob’s old shirts and her grey wool tights, under a sleeping bag they had dug out from the attic. The cottage had no central heating. It was freezing.

  The rest of her clothes lay in a heap on the armchair. She unbuttoned Bob’s shirt and pulled on her bra and T-shirt, then slipped into the brown mini-skirt she had been wearing the previous day. Her huge grey cardigan lay on the floor like a slug.

  Joanna was in the kitchen, dressed in a pink kimono, making tea.

  ‘You must be freezing,’ Helly said as she came in, running her hands through her hair and fastening it back with a band. ‘You didn’t need to get up, I can let myself out.’

  ‘I’ve been awake since five,’ Joanna replied. ‘Didn’t you hear the racket?’

  ‘What racket?’

  ‘The wind. One hell of a noise, blowing half the street down, it sounded like. I don’t know what was going on.’ She opened the fridge door and lifted out a carton of orange juice. ‘Here,’ she said as she passed it over. ‘If your hangover’s anything like mine you’ll need this.’

  Benny had fallen asleep with his eyes still open just before dawn, crouched inside the railway arch, his head leaning against the brickwork. All night the wind had flung rubbish at him; no rain, no thunder, no lightning, just whispered secrets one minute and shrieked demands the next.

  He woke as Helly slammed the cottage door behind her. He watched as she made her way past, picking through debris from the skip which had scattered itself across the street in bizarre attitudes. Then he stood up and stretched. He was stiff as hell and had run out of Smarties. He worked his shoulders backwards, trying to loosen up, then peered out at the sky: crisp, cold, a little smokey. He pulled a face, then he slipped out of the railway arch and began to follow.

  Joan awoke to the ringing of bells. There were several, all clanging frantically in different pitches, a small mad c
acophany that seemed to be growing in a corner of her head. She reached out a hand to touch the ‘off’ button on their bedside alarm. Her fingers brushed the plastic. The ringing didn’t stop. She struggled upright on one elbow and peered at the alarm resentfully. It wasn’t making any noise at all. Nor was it showing the time. Her fingers scrambled for her watch. Eight fifteen: the alarm should have gone off over an hour ago.

  Next to her, Alun stirred briefly, snuffled once into his pillow and continued to sleep. In the early days of their marriage, his shifts had caused problems. After all these years, they now slept soundly through each other’s routines. Whenever Joan cooked dinner, she made a double portion and left the rest in an oven-proof dish in the fridge. The food always went, although she would often not catch sight of Alun for days, other than as a bulk beneath the blankets, a heaviness that made the mattress slope, a male smell, a warmth.

  She swung herself heavily out of bed and went to the window. The room felt cold. She placed a hand on the electric storage heater beneath the sill. It had not come on.

  She pushed the curtain aside with one finger. The street below was in chaos. A wild wind was blowing a huge cardboard box down the road. It tripped and tumbled past a small ash tree which grew opposite their house and was now snapped half-way down the trunk. The branches were whisking to and fro, blocking half the road. Number eight’s metal bin had blown over and several empty catfood tins were pirouetting in mad swirls a foot above the pavement. The ringing sounds were coming from the direction of Denmark Hill – shop burglar alarms, several of them.

  Joan went to the door and pulled her dressing-gown off the hook. She tied the belt as she went downstairs. In the hall, she dialled her neighbour’s number.

  ‘Lydia? It’s Joan. Have you got any electricity?’

  Nobody in the street had electricity. It had gone down an hour and a half ago, setting off the alarms and causing mayhem. Lydia was surprised Joan had not woken earlier. She had been up half the night with tiles slithering down her roof. She was worried sick about the chimney.

  Joan ate cornflakes for breakfast and drank a small glass of orange squash. Then she splashed her face with cold water and dressed quickly, feeling cold and grimy. She was going to be terribly late. She left a note for Alun in case he woke up and wondered what was going on.

  Denmark Hill looked a riot. A tree and a signpost had come down and the police had cordoned off one side of the road. The burglar alarms were still ringing, some of them flashing like demented Christmas decorations. She saw the red hulk of a bus stuck at the traffic lights and began to run. Half-way there, she realised the bus wasn’t moving. The traffic round the Green was blocked solid. Some drivers had got out of their cars and were wandering around, shaking their heads.

  As Joan approached, she could see that the bus platform was packed with passengers. There appeared to be a fairly high turnover; some were crowded round trying to get on while others were crowded round trying to get off. As she got nearer she heard the conductor calling over their heads, ‘Vauxhall only. I’m only going as far as Vauxhall.’ A woman in a red mac was standing in the road and questioning him. He was shaking his head. ‘You won’t get anything going over the bridge,’ he was telling her. ‘Nothing’s going over the bridge at the moment. The bridges are all closed.’ Joan turned away. She had walked to work once before, during the bus strike. It took nearly an hour, through Kennington and over Lambeth Bridge. Anything was better than trying to get a bus.

  The same madness held sway all the way up Camberwell New Road; cars stalled, dustbins in the street, clutches of traffic followed by empty stretches where the road was too dangerous to negotiate. Children were gathered around outside the Sacred Heart secondary school, jumping for joy at the chaos as though it was a trick they had performed on a world of unsuspecting adults. As she approached Kennington, three fire brigade lorries came steaming and swaying down the Brixton Road, sirens joined in a vicious whine.

  Half-way across Lambeth Bridge she paused and looked out over the chopping, frothing Thames. The wind charged about her head, freezing the end of her nose and whistling icily in her ears. The whole of London paralysed, she thought, by a stiff breeze and a sense of confusion, and cut in two by this – this strip of brown sloshing water. A businessman staggered past, one hand grabbing furiously at his raincoat and the other clutching a briefcase to his chest. Few pedestrians had braved the bridge and those that had were taking it slowly, stopping now and then to pause and lean into the wind. Joan caught her breath, put her head down and carried on. She felt like having a good laugh. She wanted to stop on the middle of the bridge, throw her head back and roar with laughter.

  At CTA, there was great excitement. Only half the staff had managed to get in. Annette had made it. Helly was nowhere to be seen. Richard was running around consulting. Everyone had a story to tell. It was the worst storm since 1987, they all agreed. Even worse than that, perhaps. At noon, Richard stood on a table and announced that, bearing in mind the atrocious weather, the view of the management – with whom he had consulted – was that staff should be allowed home early. Gentlemen could leave at four thirty p.m., ladies at four.

  This was tantamount to declaring a national holiday. For the rest of the day, a party atmosphere prevailed. Joan spent much of it standing at the window with Annette, pointing out bizarre, detached objects which hurtled around in the street below: a man’s hat, a blanket, a pair of dancing newspapers which, as Annette observed, were obviously in love.

  By mid-afternoon the office was nearly deserted as everybody made for home. Those commuting out of London had sloped off one by one. Richard, empowered to say who should leave and when, had been sidling up to individuals and giving them the nod, enjoying his munificence. At three o’clock he had come round to their desks and said, ‘Not much point in hanging on I don’t think, girls.’ Annette had jumped to her feet. Joan had said, ‘I’ll just finish up.’ With everyone else gone, she settled down to updating the list of Approved Contractors.

  It was only when she started working on it that she remembered why it was taking her so long; it was boring. After twenty minutes she gave up and wandered over to the window. Perhaps she should go home too. She didn’t fancy walking. If she was going to try for a bus she ought to leave.

  The storm was nearly over and the street below was quieter now. A scattering of office workers was walking swiftly by. An ambulance swayed silently past. A small branch lay in the middle of the road, blown there from a distant tree. Joan watched it as it suddenly moved a few feet down the street, seemingly of its own accord. Then a van drove past and the branch was flipped over and blown into a gutter, where it stuck.

  The wind is ordinary now, Joan thought, not wild. It is pretending again. After the mockery and mayhem of the morning, she found the sudden stillness sinister. She frowned to herself. We thought we were safe in the city. We didn’t think it would come this far. Storms happen between hills, not concrete. Well, we were wrong again. Puny men and women. She shivered suddenly. What was wrong with her? This morning, crossing the Thames, the storm had made her want to roar like a medieval witch. Now she was frightened. She shook her head and turned away from the window, pulling her cardigan across her chest protectively and holding herself. All at once, a thought had come into her head, very clearly and distinctly: something bad is going to happen soon.

  Annette had scarcely seen William for a whole week. He had spent most of the time on site visits. The day of the storm, he didn’t make it in at all. When they had seen each other, they had smiled uncertainly and talked as always. Annette was puzzled. The afterglow of their odd moment had lasted for several days, then she began to doubt what had happened. More to the point, had anything happened at all? The memory seemed blurry: the briefest of touches, the feel of cotton, a catching of breath. She knew nothing about this man.

  The day after the storm, he came around to her part of the office carrying a sheaf of paper, the specification for the refurbishment works at Harro
w. She looked up at him. He came to a halt beside her desk, and looked down at her.

  Joan came pottering around the office divide holding a cloth.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the state of the cupboard.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re going to have to speak to the cleaners, Annette. If we took all the cups out one Friday then they could get at it. Nobody has for years . . .’

  Annette had always been fond of Joan, but now she felt an overwhelming desire to lever her out of their second floor window.

  Joan paused in front of her desk. She put down the cloth, then reached over and opened a drawer, ‘I don’t know . . .’

  William was shifting from one foot to another. Annette wondered how long he would stand there without feeling impelled to say something for Joan’s benefit.

  Joan had finished rummaging. She stood up, clutching her handbag. ‘Won’t be a mo . . .’

  William watched Joan leave and then handed Annette the specification. ‘It’s like this Phil in Commercial left the Dayworks out I can’t believe it can you do you fancy a drink after work?’ He gave a sharp intake of breath.

  Annette wanted to giggle. ‘Yes. Okay.’

  William scratched his scalp. ‘I’ve got the car, you see. I’m going straight to Fairlop in the morning so they’ve lent me the car. I could run you home afterwards. If you like.’

  ‘Yes. okay.’

  ‘A quick drink mind, you might be busy, I don’t know. Whatever you fancy really.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We could stay local or we could drive over your way – Lewisham, perhaps Greenwich?’

  Annette nodded, biting her lower lip to prevent herself from standing, grasping him by the lapels of his jacket and shouting in his face, I said YES!

  ‘Well, fine then,’ William said.