Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Helly said quietly. ‘People like me, we’re the most dangerous of all. That’s why people like Richard are so scared of us. We have nothing to lose.’

  There was a pause. Annette sighed. Then she said, ‘So what now?’

  Helly shrugged. ‘God knows. Looks like I’m going to get the boot.’

  ‘Unless we report him,’ said Annette. ‘All of us.’

  ‘Great, then we all get the boot.’

  ‘Not if we can prove it.’

  ‘I have a better idea,’ said Joan. ‘It’s simple.’ She plunged her fork into a chip and dabbed it in the puddle of tomato ketchup that lay on the side of her plate. ‘They put vinegar in this, I can tell.’ She looked at them. ‘I go to Richard and tell him I’ve found the sixty quid. He has no grounds for dismissing Helly. Not unless he can come up with something else, which means that you, madam, start coming in on time and keeping your nose clean.’

  ‘But that will mean you don’t get your money back,’ said Annette.

  Joan shrugged. ‘I don’t like him. I never have.’ She stabbed a second chip. ‘Never.’

  Helly shovelled gateau into her mouth and grinned. ‘Well it would be fun seeing what he does next.’

  ‘I’ll do it on Friday,’ Joan said, ‘then I’m off all next week. Will I miss anything?’

  Annette shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I would go off and enjoy your holiday. I hope the weather is nice to you.’

  ‘For the first week in April!’ said Helly. ‘Why didn’t you go after Easter weekend?’

  ‘That’s when the prices go up,’ said Joan. ‘I can’t wait to see his face. If he did nick my money then me telling him I’ve found it is going to come as a bit of a surprise.’

  Richard did not like surprises; of any sort, not even nice ones. One of the reasons he had married Gillian was because he had sensed she was the kind of woman who would never throw him an unexpected party.

  He was not an impulsive man. He could have taken the risk of sacking Helly on the spot when she had first confronted him, but he had taken the time and the trouble to tie up the loose ends, to make sure the whole thing was watertight and – if he was honest with himself – to teach her a lesson. Then there were all the other little players to be dealt with. He had enjoyed that. He had surprised himself just how much he had enjoyed it.

  He had never considered old Joan to be a player, little or otherwise. In fact, he had never considered her much at all. She had tapped on his office door the Friday before she went on holiday, stepping inside as diffidently as if his carpet was an ice rink. Her face was bright red. She was holding one hand tightly clasped in the other, as though she was afraid it might drop off.

  ‘Richard,’ she said. ‘Fact is, I’m such an old goose. I’m a bit embarrassed.’

  Richard had just finished concluding some very satisfactory business on the phone and was in an expansive mood. He liked being courteous to Joan. She was a woman who had nothing to offer, after all. It pleased him to be more polite and attentive than was necessarily warranted.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said, indicating the chair in front of his desk.

  ‘No, I won’t thanks, Richard, fact is I’m off shortly. I’ve taken a half day so that I can get things ready. I just thought I should let you know so you aren’t thinking about it while I’m away. Annette said she’d deal with it, I’ve already told her, but I was so embarrassed I thought I ought to apologise for causing all this trouble.’

  Richard was beginning to have a slightly bloated feeling somewhere in his lower intestine. It often happened when he sensed that life was about to become more unpleasant and complicated than it needed to be.

  ‘Fact is,’ Joan continued, ‘I found that sixty pounds. I didn’t put it in my purse after all. I put it in a little pocket in my handbag. Can’t think why. Annette told me you offered to replace it and everything. I can’t thank you enough, but it won’t be necessary. I’m so sorry to have put everyone to all this bother, and I’m sorry if it maybe made you jump to conclusions about certain other people that weren’t really right.’ She was already backing out the door. ‘It would be awful if anyone got dealt with unfairly after all, wouldn’t it? I would’ve died if there’d been any misunderstanding. I’m so sorry . . .’

  Richard did not reply but waved his hand in an all-purpose gesture of dismissal and farewell.

  After she had gone he sat back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling.

  There were several possibilities. Their likelihood depended on just how soft Joan was. It was not inconceivable that, realising Helly was about to be sacked, she would pretend there had been no theft because she did not want to see the little baggage out of a job. Richard’s mother had been like that and Richard had despised her since he was a toddler. She had died of breast cancer when Richard was twenty-two, her tumour contracted weeks after her sister had been declared finally free of the same disease. He had hated her for getting ill, unable to shake off the conviction that she had deliberately taken the growth from his aunt so that his aunt might live. It would have been just typical. The other possibility, and one that he had to consider seriously, was that Joan was in on it. He chewed at his lower lip. This was getting rather complicated, even for him.

  So: Helly, William. Probably Joan. Annette? He could not sack all his staff at once but it was time for a clean sweep, there was no doubt about that. Richard leant down, opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out his cigarettes. He did not normally smoke in his office, but he felt like one now. Unlike other people, he did not smoke in moments of stress or tension but in ones of triumph. He liked exhaling. He liked doing that very much. Many a man would be intimidated by the forces arrayed against me, he thought. But I like a challenge. He drew on the cigarette deeply. He closed his eyes. So they are all in on it. So be it.

  ‘Helly . . .’ Annette’s tone was contemplative. They were alone in the office. Joan had reported back to them, then left to go home and do her packing. An hour later, Richard had come out of his office, locked it and departed for the afternoon. They seemed to be the only two people around.

  ‘Yeah?’ Helly looked up from Joan’s desk where she was making a start on the filing so that she didn’t have to do it all on her own on Monday.

  ‘You haven’t got proof, have you.’ It was not a question.

  Helly bit her lip and moved her head from side to side. ‘Not exactly. No.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I photocopied the tender result sheets, those I could find in the files – but they don’t really add up to proof. They look too regular. It’s clear the contractors are taking it in turns. It’s odd, but it isn’t proof.’

  ‘So basically we hope he doesn’t call our bluff?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helly with a small smile. ‘We do.’

  They continued working in silence for a few minutes more. Then Helly said, her voice casual, ‘Course, if one of us was friendly with a surveyor, then we could probably get proof.’

  The terminology of the building profession was something it had taken a while for William to pick up. He could look at a damp elevation and tell exactly how long it would be before it crumbled – but he still wanted to call it a wall. He had only just passed his surveying degree, not because he was incompetent but because his verbal aptitude was not equal to his other skills. He had never managed the knack of throwing technical words around with the airy confidence of Richard or Raymond or any of the other surveyors. Things were as they were, and to him it seemed futile to call them something else.

  Guano, for instance; guano was a term he had not come across before he came to work for the Capital Transport Authority. He first saw it on the Schedule of Dilapidations for Grantham House in Soho, a deserted and dangerous building which the company was hoping to knock down or refurbish. Section Two: Roof. Clear large quantities of dried guano from roof area and make good.

  ‘What is guano?’ he had asked out loud, standing in front of Joan’s
desk, where she and Helly were filing. ‘Do either of you two know?’

  ‘Something not very nice,’ Joan had replied.

  ‘Pigeon shit,’ said Helly.

  Pigeon shit was what he found when he went to update the survey with Jefferson Worth from the commercial department. They had taken over the job from Raymond three months previously and it should have been done weeks ago. Sooner or later, there would be trouble.

  As they approached the rotting building, Jefferson chatted to him amiably. ‘It’s our side of the CTA that brings the money in you know,’ he informed him as they unlocked the doors. ‘Our lot pays your lot’s wages.’ Jefferson Worth was twenty-two and loved his job. His speciality was muck; any kind of muck, he wasn’t fussy. When Simon from Technical Services found a dead fox on wasteground behind the Hammersmith site, he called Jefferson. When there was a problem with rats dying and going mouldy in the tunnel between White City and East Acton, Jefferson offered to sort it out. When Jefferson Worth was a small boy, William thought, as the lanky lad shouldered the door open and trotted up the staircase, he probably made mud pies out of excrement and pulled the legs off beetles.

  The roof of Grantham House looked like the surface of the moon. Over the years, the excrement had dried and built up in layers, caked in dull white with a grey, flaky surface. A flock of birds lifted off the roof as Jefferson flung back the iron trap door and they clambered out. Here and there were clumps of dead ones; the corpses dotted around in little groups, in various stages of decomposition. Some were only skeletons.

  And everywhere, there was the thick smell of pigeon; live pigeon, dead pigeon, pigeon somewhere in between. Pigeon shit. William looked up at the London sky. It was white with cloud. He shook his head. Why hang around here all day when you could fly off anywhere?

  The birds were roosting on the parapet wall above the gutter. William and Jefferson scrunched across the guano to take a look. Jefferson rested his hands on the parapet and grimaced. ‘Look at this coping. It’s really cracked.’

  ‘Is the brickwork damp?’ William asked.

  ‘Hard to tell.’

  Jefferson leant over the parapet. ‘Careful,’ William said.

  ‘I want to take a look at the tiles,’ Jefferson replied, ‘see if the fixings are rusted.’ William heard a scrape, then a slither, then an, ‘Oh shit,’ as Jefferson jumped back from the parapet.

  ‘What happened?’ asked William. As he spoke, there was a small crash from the street.

  ‘I dislodged something.’ Jefferson leant back over the parapet. ‘It wasn’t a whole tile, only a piece of slate. Don’t think it hit anyone. No pedestrians down there at least. Well not any more, anyway.’

  William pulled out his notebook. ‘We’d better make a note to get the pavement cordoned off.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Jefferson derisively, ‘it was only because I wiggled it.’

  William made the note anyway. ‘I’m amazed you haven’t had a serious accident by now.’

  Jefferson tucked his hands in his pockets. ‘People like me never have accidents. Let’s take a look at the south elevation.’

  As they crossed the roof, Jefferson stopped. He frowned. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This roof feels bouncy.’ He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. ‘Does that feel like damp to you?’ He moved off the patch.

  William went over. Suddenly, he felt the bitumen give way beneath him, its fibres pulling apart like a damp tissue. He gave out a cry. Jefferson whooped and flung himself over. William’s hands hit the roof and grasped at its rough surface. Instinctively, he tried to push his weight back up. His legs were flailing desperately, in thin air.

  Jefferson grabbed his arms. He was swearing, over and over again. He hauled William towards him and William heard his jacket rip. He managed to swing one leg back up onto the roof and push himself round.

  When they were both clear, they collapsed. Jefferson was still swearing but had started to laugh. Shock and relief combined in William and he began to laugh as well. ‘I lost a shoe!’ he gasped.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A shoe!’

  Jefferson began to crawl towards the hole that had opened up in the roof. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, peering down into the room below. ‘Look at this. The beams are completely rotten. It’s only the bitumen holding this roof together. Jesus, we could have both gone through.’

  ‘Come away from that hole, you idiot.’ William levered himself onto his feet. ‘We can go down and get the shoe.’ He looked at his hands. They were grazed badly. He had scraped the skin off the side of his left hand, and most of the thumb. It was bleeding. The right sleeve of his jacket had pulled away at the seam. He breathed deeply, looking at his blackened, bleeding hands.

  ‘You alright?’ Jefferson asked.

  ‘Yeah . . .’ said William, still breathing deeply. Jefferson had probably caused the accident with his stupid bouncing, but then he had probably saved him from falling through the roof.

  ‘God, we’re going to have a lot of forms to fill out when we tell them about this one,’ Jefferson said. ‘You could have broken your neck. Sit down. You’re white as a sheet.’

  William shook his head. ‘Let’s get my shoe and get out of here.’

  At Leicester Square tube station, they waited on the platform. ‘We could’ve got a taxi, I reckon,’ Jefferson said. ‘With you being injured and everything.’ Two blonde tourists passed and glanced their way. ‘Thought our luck was in for a minute,’ he added, ‘but I think they’re wondering what a couple of dossers like us are doing wearing suits.’

  William looked down at his filthy torn jacket. ‘I look like a tramp out of that Judy Garland film.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll make you go to Casualty.’

  William chortled without humour. ‘I shouldn’t think so. More likely to give me a tube of antiseptic and tell me to get on with it. Who’s the first aider on our floor?’

  ‘Annette.’

  Annette. Their train pulled in. Annette. He hadn’t been able to see her properly all week. It was Thursday. They took their seats. William had a handkerchief wrapped round his grazed hand. He smiled to himself. He and Annette would be able to touch in the middle of the office, with people walking past. She would caress his hand. He sat back in his seat, imagining. It was like having money in the bank.

  Opposite them, a businessman in his forties sat staring gloomily into the middle distance. He was wearing a thin, navy blue tie with a very neat knot. His hair receded slightly at the temples. His eyes were milky, as if he was blind.

  I want a divorce, William thought, and the idea came to him as fresh and clean and shocking as if somebody had tipped a bucket of cold water over his head. I want to be with Annette. I want to take her to the cinema. I want to go for walks on Sundays and introduce her to my friends. I want a divorce. He blinked hard, as if the carriage and Jefferson and the businessman were all a mirage which would disappear if only he could see straight. He drew breath and exhaled sharply.

  Jefferson leant forward in his seat. ‘You sure you’re alright?’ he asked. William nodded. ‘Delayed shock,’ Jefferson said. ‘Take it easy. If you feel sick, put your head between your knees.’

  William shook his head to indicate that he was okay, but found himself unable to speak, as though his powers of speech had been channelled instead into that thought, that realisation – the vast swimming enormity of it.

  Just before Green Park the train slowed, crawled, then halted. Jefferson muttered an oath. The businessman opposite sat up and looked around in alarm.

  After a few moments, the driver’s intercom crackled into life. ‘We apologise for this delay, ladies and gentlemen. This is due to the knock-on effect of a person under a train at Earl’s Court. I hope we shall be moving shortly.’

  ‘Not, “person under train” again,’ said Jefferson. ‘I had that going home last night. I always think when they say that, what they’re really saying is “listen, it’s one of you lot that’s caused the problem, not us
”. Mind you, can’t say I blame them. Last night I was stuck at Harlesden for half an hour. You’d think if someone was going to top themselves they’d at least have the consideration not to do it during the rush hour.’

  William nodded, dumbly. He looked at his watch: eleven thirty-two a.m. April the first. His whole life had changed. Jefferson’s voice was loud in the stillness of the carriage. The businessman opposite glared at them.

  In the middle of the office, in full sight of everybody, William and Annette held hands.

  ‘Will it hurt, nurse?’ William asked, as Annette withdrew a tube of antiseptic from the red plastic first aid box sitting on the desk beside them.

  ‘No dear. It’ll feel a bit cold. Are you sure you washed it properly?’

  ‘Yes miss.’

  Raymond came briskly round the corner. Thursday’s bow-tie was a jaunty tartan number, blue and green. Raymond looked concerned. He came and stood over them with his arms crossed, gazing down at Annette’s efforts contemplatively. ‘I told Richard you should have gone to Casualty,’ he muttered.

  Oh piss off, William thought.

  ‘I don’t think that’s really necessary. He says he had a tetanus three months ago . . .’ said Annette, her head bent over William’s hand as she – slowly and carefully – smoothed in the antiseptic cream.

  ‘I know that,’ Raymond snapped. ‘I’m thinking of insurance purposes. You know, our legal position. He lost a shoe. He should have his leg X-rayed.’

  William kept his head lowered. He knew that if he met Annette’s gaze they would both begin to laugh.

  ‘Don’t imagine you can sue us in three years’ time young man,’ said Raymond as he strode away.

  William moved his head a fraction closer to Annette. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said quietly. She glanced up at him. ‘I have to talk to you now, as soon as possible. It’s important. There’s something I want to ask you.’

  She lowered her head again. ‘Actually I want to talk to you as well. I’ve been wanting to all week but we just haven’t had the opportunity. It’s been really busy with Joan away.’ She stood up. ‘We won’t put a dressing on for now,’ she said, ‘give it a chance. But if it’s weeping then we’ll have to cover it up.’