Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  He turned and was gone.

  The rest of that afternoon took on a weird glow. William went out on a site visit. Annette put the specification to one side and tried to work as normal, but suddenly every detail of the office became invested with significance. At one point, she looked round to see that a smear of dirt on the filing cabinet next to her had inexplicably formed itself into an oblong shape that was almost a heart. The leaves of Joan’s beloved ivy caught the light from the window and bounced it in her direction. When she heard a woman laughing in the street outside, she nearly joined in.

  She picked up a tape of dictation that Richard had left. The letter she began to type seemed bizarre. Richard was explaining to a contractor that the tender documents would be forwarded to him as soon as possible. How sweet, she thought. Language had dissolved. Phrases had become like shards of coloured glass from a broken ornament; pretty and intriguing, but it was impossible to stand back and picture the whole. She typed, I will contact you on Monday 15th with my findings and giggled. He will contact them with his findings? Why doesn’t he just use the phone?

  The situation did not improve when she moved on to a Schedule of Dilapidations that Raymond wanted by the end of the afternoon. The contractors were instructed to infill ducts with trowelled cement. Poor ducks, she thought. Each duck had an approximate length of eight metres. Further down the page, the words bitumous macadam conjured up an image of half a dozen burly lads around a massive steaming cauldron, stirring with a wooden spoon and adding eye of newt or leg of toad. Some of it, she typed, was causing severe ponding in isolated areas. I bet it is, she thought.

  A few minutes later, Raymond strode past. He stopped, turned back and frowned at her.

  ‘Annette,’ he said with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

  She removed her headphones and looked up, wide-eyed.

  ‘You’re humming,’ he accused.

  ‘Oh, was I?’ asked Annette. ‘I had the audio phones on. What was it?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think it might have been “I’m a pink toothbrush, you’re a blue toothbrush” . . .’

  William felt sick. He was waiting in the Capital Transport Authority’s works car on the corner of Greycoat Street and Rochester Street. He and Annette had agreed to drive down to Greenwich and have a drink there. ‘Greenwich is nice,’ Annette had said. And we don’t want to bump into anyone from work, she might have added.

  William wanted this. He had wanted it all week. It had taken him four days and much careful planning to ask her. But right now, this minute, as he sat in an unfamiliar car down an unfamiliar side-street, he couldn’t imagine what on earth he was playing at. What would they talk about as they drove? It was the middle of the rush hour, for Christ’s sake. Well William, he thought, you sure know how to show a girl a good time. Twenty minutes getting past the roadworks on the Old Kent Road. That’ll sweep her off her feet.

  He turned on the radio. It was tuned to a music station, golden oldies of some sort. What did Annette listen to? Golden oldies wouldn’t do, she’d think he was a prat. He fiddled, trying to find Radio Four, but was unable to escape from a harsh judgemental fuzzing sound. He turned it off. He felt sick; truly, deeply, comprehensively sick. He wished he had never set eyes on the woman. He wished he had gone to the toilet before he left the office.

  In the office, in the ladies’ second floor toilet, Annette was being sick.

  She was ten minutes late, the longest ten minutes of William’s life. He watched her as she walked down Greycoat Street. He liked her walk, a slow-swaying glide; funny that he hadn’t noticed that before. She was looking at each car in turn. He raised his hand but realised that she was still too far away to see. Now she was making her way towards him. He sat back in his seat and relaxed, enjoying the moment: gazing at an object of desire about to return the gaze.

  He started the engine as she approached, then leant over to open the passenger door.

  ‘Sorry, I got held up,’ she said, smiling, as she climbed in and turned to pull at the seatbelt.

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said, returning her smile. He noticed that she had applied fresh lipstick, a soft peach colour that toned with her pale skin. She did that for me, he thought, swelling with pride. A traffic warden was making his way slowly down the street as they pulled out.

  ‘Just in time,’ said Annette, her voice low and warm.

  ‘Greenwich here we come.’ William accelerated away from the kerb, smiling all over his face, for suddenly, being in a car with Annette, driving away from work, seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

  They drank in the corner of an empty riverside pub and talked about work and Perthshire. They both had relatives there. Annette entertained him with the history of personalities from the office. As their laughter died after one anecdote, William reached across the table and placed one hand over hers.

  Annette had nearly finished her second half of lager and was dying for the loo, but stayed there for another twenty minutes rather than break the contact.

  Neither of them raised the topic of dinner. It seemed enough to be sitting there, like toddlers who had just learned to sit at all. To go any further forward that night would be foolish.

  At a quarter to nine, Annette checked her watch. She didn’t want to leave but thought that William might be getting anxious and wondering how to break it to her.

  ‘I’ll drop you off home,’ he said.

  They pulled into her cul-de-sac and she pointed out her house. ‘That’s it,’ she said, ‘the one with the red numbers. I thought I’d be different.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘We must do that again,’ Annette said, and knew instantly that she had said the wrong thing. To say that they must do it again implied that there was a possibility they would not.

  ‘Yes, if you like,’ William replied quickly, his tone carefully casual. The intimacy of the pub had been dissolved. They were back to square one.

  Annette undid her seatbelt. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  As William drove home on automatic pilot, euphoria fought with confusion, caution with desire. I am on a road, he thought, something like a motorway. No stopping. As he pulled out of Hither Green Lane, a roadsign informed him that there were ‘CHANGED PRIORITIES AHEAD’.

  His house was in a wide, quiet street with small square gardens in front of tall tight terraces. On the corner of the main road was a row of shops: fruiterers, off licence, launderette. As he approached, he realised that he could not possibly arrive home just yet. He pulled in by the shops and undid his seatbelt. He sat back, his head on the headrest. Unreal. It was all too unreal.

  It began to rain, softly, the scarcest of noises pattering on the car roof. A neighbour walked past – Mr Greenly from number eighteen – turning up the collar of his sheepskin jacket. William was momentarily panic-stricken. Had Greenly seen him? What if he and Alison bumped into him at the weekend and he said, ‘Hello William, what were you doing parked outside the shops on Thursday night?’ Unlikely. Possible. William jumped out and trotted over to the off licence, where he bought a four-pack of lager and a packet of mints.

  Back inside the car, he tossed the four-pack onto the passenger seat and opened the mints. He had been driving home when he had had a coughing fit, so he had stopped to get mints. He had bought the four-pack on impulse. He fancied a lager. Yes, it sounded perfectly plausible.

  He sat back in his seat and sighed. Already, he thought. It has begun already: the lies, the excuses, watching my step, having an answer ready for any question no matter how insignificant or accidental. Already. And I’ve hardly touched her yet.

  The next day was Friday. He drove out to Fairlop in the morning and rushed through his meeting with the contractors. He was desperate to get back to John Blow House before lunchtime.

  He arrived at just gone one o’clock, as Annette was standing up from her seat and reaching for her coat. She shrugged it over her shoulders as h
e approached and lifted her hair free from the collar. Joan was wandering around a few yards away, but he was breathless and reckless by then.

  He went up to Annette. ‘Green Man? Ten minutes?’ he said softly. She nodded.

  After lunch, they walked back to the office side by side, together but carefully apart.

  In the tiny mirrored lift, they had their first snog.

  Saturday in Bromley. William was lying on top of his bed, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Alison was downstairs, cleaning the kitchen before she went shopping. He could hear the clatter of the floor mop, Paul’s reedy voice enquiring, followed by her softer tones telling him to get his shoes on because they were going out.

  The previous night, they had had friends round to dinner. William was full of Annette – their lunch, their kiss, their future – so he had been more jovial and talkative than usual, to cover up the fact that he didn’t feel like talking at all. This morning, after breakfast, he had feigned a hangover. He had to get Alison out of the house.

  He waited tensely until he heard the front door slam. Then, every muscle relaxed. ‘I won’t be more than an hour,’ Alison had said. A whole hour. A whole hour to do nothing except think about Annette. He lay on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. He thought through the rights and wrongs of phoning her, making a mental list. Rights: I want to talk to her; I am desperate to hear her voice; I’d do anything to be with her right now; I’ll go crazy if I have to wait until Monday morning. Wrongs: she might not be in; she might be in but not want to talk to me; I will probably make a complete berk of myself. He picked up the phone.

  The answer machine clicked on after two rings. He listened to her message, her cool, efficient, measured voice. As the beep went, he slammed down the phone.

  Where was she? Out at the shops, probably. Probably. Maybe she was in. Perhaps, if he had spoken, she would have picked up the phone. Or maybe there was someone else with her. She had left the machine on and turned the ringer volume down, so that they would not be disturbed. The thought made him crazy, so he thought it some more. During their lunch, he had carefully avoided asking her what she was going to do that night. If he went too fast it would scare her off. If she was unattached, what did she do on Friday nights? How many friends did she have? She was beautiful; she probably had hundreds. He was probably the seventh man to ring her that morning, anxiously, and hang up without leaving a message. He should have left a message.

  Already, he felt humiliated. Here he was, on a Saturday morning, with a whole precious hour to himself. Normally he would have been gardening or watching television or sleeping. Instead, he was staring at the ceiling, thinking about Annette. Beautiful Annette. Bloody Annette. She wasn’t thinking about him. She was in bed with someone else with the answer machine on and the ringer off. She was saying to him, ‘You’ll never guess. There’s this bloke at work who fancies me. I had lunch with him yesterday but just for a laugh. He’s such a jerk. He’s called William.’ Henry – the man she was sleeping with – was replying, ‘William? Really?’ They were having a good laugh.

  Then he thought of how she had looked the second before he had kissed her in the lift, the slow lowering of her eyelids. He groaned at the recollection. He had lifted his hand and placed his palm on her cheek. Her arm had encircled him, underneath his jacket. He could still feel the soft, insistent pressure of her fingertips.

  He rolled over onto his side, wrapping his arms around himself, drawing himself in. His penis began to fill, pressing against his boxer shorts, causing a small ache to grow and blossom in his pelvic region; an unlocated pain, as if an animal was growing inside his groin. He uncurled, rolling onto his back and stretching out. Annette, Annette – the feel of her fingers on his spine.

  He reached out and took the phone off the hook. As he rolled over, his T-shirt rode up from his jeans. He rubbed his stomach with the flat of one hand, imagining it was Annette’s hand. Then he allowed the hand to wander of its own accord, downwards. They were in a hotel room in Paris, or Vienna or Rome – anywhere except England. (Anywhere a good long way from Bromley.) The hand fiddled around the top button of his jeans, unsure of itself. It twisted the button open. Then it paused. He groaned. Don’t torment me, he thought. Torment me, he begged. The hand wandered over the top of his jeans to the fat full swelling underneath. She was lying on top of him, wearing a transparent white blouse. The hand began to flip open each button on his flies. She was sitting astride his legs, pinning them to the bed. He raised his buttocks slightly so that the hand could push his jeans down. As it did, he heard a soft chinking sound as some loose change slipped out of his pockets and onto the bed. At last, the hand slipped inside his boxer shorts. He was hard as a rock. Annette was underneath him. She was raising her knees. She was all pale warmth and wide eyes and her even, measured voice was saying in an even, measured way, ‘Yes . . .’

  He finished curled up on his side, clutching himself. For a moment he lay, feeling the small sweet throb, the ebb and flow. Then he uncurled and reached over for the tissues that Alison kept on her side of the bed. His hand was dripping. He wiped it then turned to scrape at the duvet cover. As he moved, he saw that he had managed to spurt over the loose change that had fallen from his pocket. The coins lay in a small pile with a large dollop of spunk spread across them, two sins tangled into one. He counted. There were several pound coins, two fifties and other small silver – nearly six quid. He wiped himself, sat upright and did up his flies. Then he scooped the coins up with the tissue and took them to the bathroom. He dropped them in the sink and ran some warm water over them. Then he pulled off a strip of loo roll and laid it along the side of the bath. When he had washed the coins, he placed them one by one on the loo roll to dry. He went back to the bedroom, to double check the duvet.

  Annette stood over her answer machine and glared at it. She replayed the message. There it was, an unmistakable click. She had only taken the rubbish out to the bins at the end of the cul-de-sac, and in the ten seconds she had been out of the house someone had rung. Her mother? Her mother never rang on a Saturday morning. Saturday morning was her appointment at the hairdresser’s, which held the same importance for Annette’s mother as confession for a Jesuit. No, not her mother. Annette bit her lip, then began to smile. She strutted round her living room in a neat circle. Got him, she thought. I’ve got him.

  Alison and Paul were back after only twenty minutes. Alison had got as far as Superdrug and then remembered that she had left her chequebook behind. She had enough cash for the toiletries but not the supermarket.

  ‘You’ll have to take him later. I did it last week,’ she added defensively.

  William had come downstairs in a hurry. ‘Alright,’ he said quickly, and went over and gave her a hug. ‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ he said cheerfully.

  Paul had broken away from his mother and charged up the stairs to take off his jumper.

  ‘On the chair Paul!’ Alison called after him. ‘Not on the floor. Neatly on the chair! Any post?’ she asked William.

  William indicated an envelope on the kitchen table. ‘The insurance people.’

  Alison sat and began to open it. ‘What did you do with Tanya’s card? I haven’t read it yet.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ William said. He plugged in the kettle and went through to the living room.

  While he was gone, Paul came downstairs. He had taken off his jumper and, while he was at it, his trousers and one sock. He had two fingers in his mouth. He came and stood by Alison’s chair while she opened the letter.

  ‘Mummy,’ he said, wrapping his naked limb around her chair leg and putting three fingers in his mouth.

  ‘Yes darling?’ Alison replied. She reached out a hand and stroked his hair while she read the insurance company’s letter.

  ‘Why has Daddy left money in the bathroom?’

  ‘Has he?’ asked Alison absently.

  ‘Yes. On tissues. He’s left money on the bath on tissues.’

  ‘Don’t know darling,’ murmured
Alison, ‘why don’t you run and ask him?’ Understand why, Richard thought. Then work out how.

  It was Saturday in Surrey, too. Richard put down the phone. Arthur Robinson had rung first thing with the news. Benny had done well.

  He went back into the kitchen. He was wearing his navy tracksuit and an Aran sweater. It felt good to be free of his suit, to be somewhere where he was not expected to make decisions. Gillian had gone out a few minutes ago, with her friend Janice, to check the storm damage at the riding school. She had left a pot of coffee on the hob and brioches in the oven.

  Newspapers were scattered across the table. He sat down and picked one up, scanned the front page and dropped it down again, frowning. He didn’t like Arthur Robinson having to ring him at home. He resented the intrusion – but then this business had intruded, there was no doubt about that. Still, everything was turning out as he wanted. It would be fine.

  Two of the dogs, Goldie and Petal, padded into the kitchen in procession, heads down and tongues lolling. They had been out galumphing round the garden.

  ‘Here . . .’ Richard patted his knees with both hands and whistled lightly. Goldie pottered over and landed her chin in Richard’s lap. ‘There, girl . . .’ Richard scratched her roughly behind both ears, the way she liked. ‘Thirsty now, eh?’

  Richard stood and went out to the utility room. A cold breeze was blowing in from the garden, through the door the dogs had pushed open. He closed it, then bent to pick up their tin water bowls. Gillian had written Goldie and Petal on the sides with indelible black marker. ‘Come on girls! Here you are!’ Richard called out over the sounds of the water splashing into the tins. Goldie bounded through.

  As he walked back into the kitchen, Richard tripped on the step. He caught himself before he fell, landing against the door and giving a small cry as his back wrenched. It was still tender from the after-effects of his near miss on the M23. As he righted himself, Petal lunged past him. Richard swore, swung round and kicked the dog full in the ribs, flinging her back into the kitchen. Petal let out a yelp and then skittered back against the pine dresser, where she lay shaking with terror, panting in startled breaths, wide-eyed.