Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  ‘As I was coming out of the tube, I went to get an apricot croissant from that place near Platform 5. It was ten o’clock, I was bleeding starving. Anyway, as I’m turning away, I thought I’ll go for a little walk up the plaza, eat my croissant, no hurry to get back – you know how it is when you get let out unexpectedly. As I’m going past the payphones tucked round the corner, who should I see but Richard, making a call from a public phone on his way to work. Ten in the morning.’ She paused to sip from her coffee.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Annette.

  Helly sighed. ‘Listen will you? At the time I thought oh, that’s odd, and then I didn’t think anything more. Except later that day he was running round in a big state saying where was his jacket? Do you remember? He’d had a meeting upstairs and left it and they got Karen to come down; meanwhile he’d gone back up. I thought blimey, two people having a cow in one day. Two cows. I don’t know where you were but anyway you weren’t around, so I took it off her. As I did, this notebook falls out. Well, it didn’t exactly fall out, it was sort of poking out the inside pocket, so I had a little look through it, as you do.

  ‘In the front was a list of the main contractors and their phone numbers, with ticks next to their names, some with three ticks, some four. A couple with asterisks. Then inside, there’s a page for every job Richard’s been in charge of going way back, and lists of numbers, all in pencil. At the bottom, he’s put a contractor’s name and a question mark. Then after that, pound signs. Next to one he’s written a list of things, conservatory, wooden floor tiles, garden shed . . . It looked like nothing much. Towards the end there were some notes on the Ealing refurb job, remember that? Went to Robinson’s eventually, twenty-four grand.’

  Annette frowned. Helly looked at her.

  ‘When did that job go out?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Oh I can’t remember,’ said Annette. ‘End of November?’

  ‘December second,’ Helly continued. ‘The tenders had to be back by the eighteenth. I checked.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So Richard has a note in his little book of who is going to get the job, and how much, a clear month before the bids come in. What is he, psychic or something?’

  Annette got to her feet. She picked up her red mug from where it sat on the carpet and took it into the kitchenette. She filled it with water from the tap and put it down to stand in the washing up bowl. Then she poured herself a glass of water from the nearby filter jug.

  ‘How could he be taking bribes without upstairs knowing? That’s what the tender envelopes are for.’

  ‘It’s easy. Dead easy. Even I could do it. You have to have at least three companies tendering for any contract over ten thousand, right? The bids come in sealed tenders. Except Richard has the keys to the stationery cupboard, so he has his own supply of envelopes in case he needs to check a tender and then re-seal it. Either that or he has someone inside a company who tips him off what they’re going to bid. Then he tells the other company to bid under.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a ring?’

  Helly shrugged. ‘Might be. Or maybe it’s just one bloke on Richard’s payroll in two of the companies and the boss of the one who’s funding the whole thing.’ She gave a small smile. ‘I think I’m a fucking genius.’

  Annette went back to the sofa. ‘Have you got any proof of all this? Are you going to report it or what?’

  Helly’s smile disappeared. She drained her coffee cup and took it over to the sink, placing it next to Annette’s. She paused; turned away. When she turned back, her voice had taken on a guarded tone. ‘I shouldn’t really have gone into all that. You’re probably not even interested. Anyway I could have got it all wrong couldn’t I? Look, I’d better go now. Are you going to ring the office and straighten things out?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Helly . . .’ Annette paused. They were both standing in the kitchenette. Annette glanced out of the window, then back. ‘Do you notice everything that goes on, I mean . . .’

  Helly opened her mouth and tipped her head back, giving a small hoot. ‘You mean have I noticed you and William are knocking each other off?’ She shook her head from side to side. ‘Course I bleeding well have. I’d have to be a complete berk not to notice that one.’

  Annette glared at her in alarm. ‘How did you know? Does everybody else?’

  ‘Everybody else did before you, probably.’ Helly rolled her eyes. ‘Look, you two were all chummy and flirty from the minute he arrived. Pretending to have little bust-ups about typing. Then all at once, it stops. One day you both come in and you are suddenly very polite to each other. Couldn’t be more proper. It’s a dead give-away. Nobody flirts in public once they’ve actually started doing it.’

  Annette sighed. She lifted her hands, then dropped them again. Eventually, she began to smile. Then they both smiled.

  Helly looked at her watch. ‘Listen, I’d love to stay and get the details but I’d better push off.’

  ‘Are you sure? How will you get home?’

  ‘I’ll go and see my gran. They don’t normally listen to the news but you never know. I can get a 36 on Rushey Green can’t I?’

  Annette nodded. ‘If you’re sure. Or anything going into Lewisham. Helly.’ They paused at the door. ‘Thanks for bringing me home. Considering we don’t really get on, it was nice.’

  She shrugged. ‘Beats going into work.’

  Annette opened the door, then watched as Helly walked away down the cul-de-sac and turned into the main road. She closed the door and went over to the window. She lifted a hand to her mouth and bit lightly at a finger. It’s obvious, she thought. It really is that obvious. William won’t like that much. The thought sobered her. She could have asked Helly about Joan’s purse, but that would have meant warning her that Richard was going to get her sacked and she clearly didn’t have an inkling about that. She turned on the tap and reached for the washing-up liquid, to wash their cups. She thought about what Helly had said about Richard. She wondered if any of it was true.

  When she had finished the cups she went back to the sofa and sat down. She put her face in her hands and rubbed up and down, suddenly overcome with a wave of deep, chilling exhaustion. Then she stood up and went over to the phone.

  Her mother’s number was engaged. She was probably ringing all the emergency numbers to see if Annette was among the casualties. She would be doing that even if the bomb had gone off in Watford.

  While she waited for her mother’s line to become available, she listened to the radio reports. The two dead were a woman in her thirties – married, two children – and a younger woman believed to be in her early twenties. Helly was right, Annette thought, it could have been us. Their names had not yet been released. Relatives had yet to be informed.

  William had been on a visit to Baker Street station that morning. He had to be there at eight o’clock to meet the station supervisor and an engineer, so he had caught an early train. The first he knew of the bombing was mid-morning, as he was sitting in the supervisor’s office having a cup of tea. The supervisor, a thin man with pale eyes, was taking a phone call. ‘You’ll be alright getting back now,’ he said as he put the phone down. ‘Victoria’s open again.’

  ‘Alert?’ William asked.

  ‘Nah, they closed all the mainline stations down because of the bomb at London Bridge.’

  William finished his tea and left.

  When he got back to the office, he found Joan sitting in solitary splendour, tapping carefully at her computer. He ran a hand through his hair and gave a little laugh. ‘Morning Joan, morning.’

  ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ said Joan, without looking up from her keyboard. ‘Two people. A woman with two little girls as well. Dreadful.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’ he said lightly.

  Joan looked up. ‘Oh, you’ve only just got in. That’s right, you’ve been at Baker Street. Richard was asking and I couldn’t remember. You forgot to put it in your diary. He gets a bit cross when you do that, you know. You
should watch it.’

  William persisted. ‘You’re the only one here then?’

  ‘Raymond’s in. A lot of people got held up. And we won’t be seeing Helly or Annette. They were ever so close you know. It must have been awful. I said to Annette she should have gone to hospital.’ William sat down on a nearby chair, while Joan continued. ‘She and Helly were on the train. They saw some of the people that were hurt. They got outside the station and Annette went into shock. Helly had to take her home. I don’t think she’ll be in tomorrow. I told her she should take the rest of the week off. That kind of thing really throws you even if nothing has happened.’

  William got to his feet.

  ‘There’s two messages on your desk,’ said Joan. ‘One from Jefferson in Commercial, about the Grantham House Survey of Dilapidations. He said it’s urgent. I don’t know who the other one was.’

  At his desk, William pulled up the two yellow notelets and re-stuck them on an envelope lying in his in-tray. He rested his elbows on his desk and put one hand over his mouth. Annette had been on that train.

  He dialled her number. The line was engaged.

  He sat for a moment, thinking. Then he rang home.

  He and Alison discussed the bombing for a few moments, then he suggested that, as there was bound to be chaos on the trains that evening, he thought he might work late to let things calm down a bit before he tried to get home. Alison was less than pleased. That evening was her French class and they had an agreement that Wednesday evenings were sacred. Other nights, they could negotiate. Wednesdays were supposed to be hers.

  Distraught at the thought of not seeing Annette simply because he was married with a child, William had an uncharacteristic fit of sarcasm. ‘Well I’m sorry, dear,’ he said, with a slight emphasis on the dear, ‘but it’s hardly my fault if the IRA is renewing its mainland campaign. What do you expect me to do, come up with a Northern Ireland peace initiative?’

  There was a pause. ‘William,’ Alison said gently, ‘I think that’s a pretty poor taste remark in view of the fact that there are two people who aren’t going to get home at all tonight.’ She hung up.

  I hate her, William thought. She has a mind like a computer. She’s like a wasp. She always goes straight for the main point. Supercilious cow. She has to be right about everything. The whole of her life, she’s never put a foot wrong. He rang Annette.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice sounded soft and distant. He was overwhelmed with warmth and tenderness. She was usually so efficient, so in control, and now she sounded like someone tiny, far away. His girl.

  He wanted to come over, he told her, but he couldn’t. He was so sorry. But if she was going to be at home for the rest of that week then he could make it tomorrow or Friday, during the day. ‘Are you alright, my love?’ he asked. My love. It was the first time he had used those words. They fitted.

  As soon as William got to Charing Cross that evening, he realised that the disruption was so bad there was no way he would make it back home in time for Alison to leave for her class. He felt grim satisfaction. There was nothing he could do about it, and he had left work on time. Serve her right. He rang her from a call box and then joined the milling, stoical throng on the crowded concourse.

  It was an hour before he was able to get on a train. Then it sat on the platform at Charing Cross for a further twenty minutes, followed by another half an hour at Waterloo East. As it pulled into London Bridge, the carriage fell silent.

  The station had already re-opened. William was sitting next to the door and could see that wooden hoardings had been put up around the damaged platforms. The hoardings seemed so innocuous, the kind of thing he saw on building sites every day, yet behind them lay the site of the bombing, the spot where two women had died. Forensic experts would be hard at work. There would be a lot of cleaning up. The woman sitting opposite William was also gazing out of the window. She had tears in her eyes. A few silent, grim-faced passengers climbed on. The train waited.

  Then, a young man in a business suit opened the door next to William and leapt on, slamming it shut. William looked up and saw that he was drunk. His face was red, his gingery-fair hair ruffled and unruly. His tie was loose around his neck and one of his shirt buttons was missing. As he stood above William, swaying slightly, his white shirt gaped.

  There was no room for the young man to move further into the carriage. He was balancing unsteadily by holding on to the luggage rack above William’s head as he looked around. His mouth was large and damp and his eyes very dark. He hung his head down briefly, then lifted it back up. He looked around again.

  Then suddenly he called out, his booming young voice bouncing around the silent crowded carriage. ‘Are there any fucking Irish here?’

  The woman opposite William caught her breath. William sat very still. He could feel the pressure of the young drunk’s leg against his knees. Nobody spoke. It was as if a temperature gauge in the carriage had been suddenly switched to zero.

  ‘I said,’ the young man bellowed, ‘is there any Irish in this carriage? If there is, stand up, because I’m going to stick a knife in your face!’

  The train lurched forward. The young man staggered slightly, bumping first against William, then against the woman sitting opposite. William looked at her. She had begun to cry with fear. She was blinking hard and biting her lower lip, trying to stop herself.

  The train lurched again and then began to pull slowly out of the station.

  ‘You Irish cunts!’ the young man spat, as if he was addressing the carriage as a whole. ‘I’ve just been to see my sister in hospital. My sister’s lying in that hospital with fifteen fucking stitches in her face! You fucking Irish bastards!’

  The woman opposite William had closed her eyes. Tears were streaming down her face. The young man standing between them was radiating hatred and violence in the same way that a burning torch would give out heat. William thought of Annette, shocked and frightened, alone in her house in Catford. He thought of his son, Paul, and how smooth his skin was, how perfect the small features of his face. When Paul was concentrating on a drawing, the end of his tiny tongue would peek out from the corner of his mouth. Last weekend, he had been making orange coloured swirls on a piece of rough cream-coloured paper that Alison had given him.

  ‘What is it?’ William had asked, pointing at the picture.

  Paul had looked up, his tongue still poking, and frowned. ‘Crayon,’ he had replied.

  I want to be home, William thought. I want to be inside my own front door. I want it locked and bolted.

  The young man had fallen into drunken, sullen silence, his head swaying from side to side as he looked round the carriage and his lips moving in a silent mutter. Still no one in the carriage spoke. The woman opposite had her face turned to the window and was gazing out at the dark, her eyes distant and vacant, still filled with tears.

  For the rest of that day, Annette had the strange sensation of being underwater. Physically, she felt perfectly fit but the air around her seemed heavy. She moved carefully about her house. She turned her head slowly.

  The feeling was still there when she rose the next morning. Outside, early spring sunshine had arrived ludicrously on her doorstep. She stood blinking at her kitchen window, drinking black tea, watching two sentinel yellow daffodils by the wheely bins, heads bobbing back and forth in the wind. Neighbours passed on their way to work. The postman came and went.

  She did her weekend chores. She read a two-day-old Evening Standard from cover to cover. Each hour, on the hour, she turned on the radio and listened to the news bulletin. She had become addicted to it. The brother of the married woman who had been killed was on air saying that the lives of his entire family were ruined. The bomb had been planted in the ladies’ toilet. A politician said that the men of violence deserved no mercy. The younger woman who had died had been changing trains at London Bridge, to go to Charing Cross. The previous day, she had celebrated her twenty-second birthday. Her boyfriend had bought her a furry
giraffe. Another item included an interview with a psychologist who talked about post traumatic stress syndrome. Annette learnt that as she had not been in a prolonged situation of uncertainty or danger, she was unlikely to suffer from nightmares or flashbacks. It was possible, however, that she would spend the next month or so jumping at unexpected loud noises and swerving around litter bins.

  In the summary that followed, the announcer added that the death toll following recent floods in Indonesia had now risen to three thousand five hundred.

  Annette turned off the radio, lay down on her sofa and thought about William. She wanted him. She wanted him to buy her a furry giraffe. She wanted him to make the numbness go away.

  He arrived on Friday morning with a bunch of orange lilies and a tall glass vase. He handed them over awkwardly, while she smiled.

  ‘I couldn’t remember whether you had any vases,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t remember seeing anything. I was in the shop and the vases were behind the woman’s head on the counter and there were all these horrible pottery ones with flowers painted on them, which seemed a bit silly when you’re going to put the real thing in them anyway. Don’t you think?’

  Annette laid the flowers in the sink. She held the glass vase up to the cold white sunshine that filtered through her window. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. She put it down and kissed him.

  When the flowers were arranged, she stood them on the counter where they could be seen from both the sitting room and the kitchenette, an ostentatious shock of orange in her plain beige house. She put her arms round William and said, ‘You have brought colour.’

  He moved his fingers through her hair, massaging the back of her head. ‘Funny.’ He kissed her. Then he put his arms around her and said, ‘Safe.’

  She held him. Then she said, ‘I want to go upstairs.’

  When William has an orgasm, Annette thought, he makes a sound like someone dying, a disbelieving sound.

  Afterwards, they were hot. Annette threw back the duvet, pushed herself up from the bed and tiptoed naked to the skylight, her arms across her breasts. ‘The heat rises in this house,’ she said. ‘It gets quite warm up here even when it’s still cold downstairs. It’s nice in the evenings, though.’ She opened the skylight a crack, to let in the air. The small glimmer of sun had been covered by a thick blanket of cloud which was already beginning to darken. ‘It’s going to rain; a storm maybe,’ Annette said as she went into the bathroom.