Crazy Paving

by Louise Doughty

  In a corner of the screen, Helly could just be seen getting to her feet and beginning to unclip the mike. ‘Get this thing off me!’ she could be heard saying as Kilroy continued his closing announcement. Her voice went muffled and then disappeared.

  ‘What did you say?’ shrieked Joan. She was on the edge of her seat.

  Helly was grinning from ear to ear. ‘I said, and get me away from this orange ponce and that red-faced prat over there who both have blancmanges where their brains should be.’

  ‘You didn’t!’ said Annette.

  ‘She did,’ said Bob, philosophically.

  Joanna shook her head. ‘Our Helly,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s the start and end of her career in television.’

  Helly was beaming. ‘It was fucking great.’

  ‘Rewind it,’ said Joan. ‘I want to watch it again.’

  Later, Helly gave Annette the guided tour. It was the first time she had been to the cottage. Joan had been several times already. In Helly’s bedroom, Annette sat on the narrow single bed and looked at the walls. ‘Helly,’ she said gently, ‘all these paintings . . . I didn’t know you liked art.’

  Helly sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘It’s still a bit of a mess, this room. I want to decorate – paint it white I think. This awful floral stuff is what they had for my great-gran, the one who died. Doesn’t really go with Kandinsky.’

  Annette rose and went over to the print. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘not really my kind of thing.’

  ‘No, you’re more . . . Corot, I think.’

  ‘I don’t really know much about paintings.’ Annette sat back down. ‘Haven’t you thought about going to art school or something?’

  Helly pulled a face. ‘Nah. Not for me, that kind of place. Full of ponces. I’d be telling them all to piss off inside a fortnight.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Annette, looking around. ‘It’s a nice room.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Helly, ‘but it will be.’

  As they came down the stairs Annette said, ‘Time for me to go.’

  Joan was emerging from the sitting room. She looked up at them. ‘Are you off? Maybe I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Nonsense you two!’ Joanna appeared behind her, holding the tea-tray. ‘Stay the evening. We’ve got plenty else on video besides madam here. Bob’s going to do lasagne.’

  Joan looked from one to the other uncertainly.

  Annette said, ‘I really wish I could. I’ve got my mother at home.’ Her mother had come to stay for a few days following Annette’s discharge from hospital and was sleeping on the sofa-bed in her tiny house. She was determined to do housework of some sort or another, even when there was nothing to clean up, and followed Annette round like a small dog, waiting for her to drop something.

  ‘You stay Joan,’ she said, automatically reaching for her coat with her right arm, remembering, then switching.

  ‘Oh, there’s Alun . . .’ grumbled Joan.

  ‘Stay. You can get a mini-cab later,’ said Joanna, in a tone of voice that suggested it was all settled.

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with Gran if I were you,’ Helly advised. ‘Not unless you have a saucepan handy.’ Joanna cuffed her granddaughter across the top of her head.

  Helly ducked, straightened, then said to Annette, ‘I’ll walk you to the main road.’

  They reached the end of Sutton Street in silence. ‘This’ll do fine, I know my way from here.’ They stopped. ‘You were great,’ Annette said, ‘really good.’

  ‘It was a laugh. I wouldn’t have minded doing it again but I think I blew it.’

  Annette looked at the ground and then up at the sky. ‘I hope we all get together again soon. I’d like to stay in touch.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  They looked at each other and there was a moment of sad, swift collusion. They would not keep in touch, not long term. They both knew it and both regretted it, slightly. Put together, their regret might be enough; singly, it wasn’t quite.

  Helly laughed. ‘Well, we will if my gran has anything to do with it. She seems to be starting some kind of people-who-know-Helly society. She’s already got Joan to agree to come to Windsor with us on Saturday. They’re going to be as thick as thieves, I can tell. Joan and Joanna, sounds like a television series, doesn’t it?’

  Annette felt a twinge of jealousy that she had not been invited to Windsor, then thought how silly it was to feel jealous of two gossipy women in their late middle-age, then thought that actually it wasn’t silly at all. ‘I’m going to see an acupuncturist tomorrow,’ she said, ‘in North London.’

  Helly pulled a face. ‘Bleeding hell, they all want a piece of the action, don’t they. When will you get shot of this lot?’

  Annette smiled. ‘Oh I rather like it, all this attention. Gives me something to do while I work out what comes next.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s what we’ve all got to work out now.’ Helly had started to walk backwards. She waved. ‘Are you sure you know the way?’

  Annette raised her voice slightly. ‘Yes, thanks. And thanks to Joanna and Bob, and you were great, really. Really good.’

  Helly waved again, turned, and began to trot back down Sutton Street towards the cottage. Annette watched her until she reached the door. She continued watching as her small figure opened it, turned and waved for one last time, then disappeared inside.

  While they had been talking someone had gone round the cottage turning on lights, although it was only early evening and there was no more than the merest hint of dusk. From where Annette was standing, the windows’ pale golden rectangles lit up the cottage like a miniature, misshapen fairy castle, squatting solidly amidst the grey-brown patch of wasteground beneath a slightly purple sky.

  It was a Thursday and Alison had gone for her mid-morning swim at their local baths. With William at home now there was no need to leave Paul with the child-minder. Instead, he minded his son and then drove over to the pool to pick her up. They were early, so he and Paul went up to the viewing gallery. They were the only people there among the rows of empty wooden seating. On the ceiling above them the reflected waves from the pool made light, shifting patterns. There was the clean, heavy smell of chlorine.

  Paul clambered onto William’s knee and William said, ‘See if you can see Mummy.’

  Paul leant out to look and William held onto him. ‘There,’ said Paul, his tiny voice echoing and his hand shooting out to point.

  William scanned the water. There she was, half-way down the pool, swimming the front crawl with slow, measured strokes, lifting her head to the side every third stroke, her mouth an open ‘O’, to take in air. William watched her – Alison his wife – so clean and careful and calm. She hardly made a splash. ‘That’s right,’ he said to Paul. ‘In the water, there, just about to pass that stepladder with the man sitting at the top.’

  Paul turned to him and frowned. ‘That isn’t Mummy.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘No it isn’t. Mummy’s there.’ Paul pointed again, his face screwed up indignantly.

  Standing on the edge of pool, at the deep end, was a woman in a red swimsuit with wet, slicked back hair. She paused, then lifted her arms, about to dive back in. It was Alison. I didn’t know she had a red swimsuit, William thought.

  In the water, Alison swam in slow sure laps, alternating one stroke after the other; front crawl, breaststroke, back-stroke. Every sixth length, she stopped at the deep end and did leg exercises against the edge of the pool, then climbed out and dived back in again. She liked coming on a Thursday morning. It was the quietest time. It was the only time she was able to think clearly.

  Earlier that week, she had been to see William’s counsellor. He had asked to see her, William said, to get an idea of the family support he was receiving following his trauma. She had sat in the counsellor’s room at the hospital and he had talked of his concern. Six weeks on from the incident, William was still suffering flashbacks and night sweats. The counsellor wanted to refer him to a specialist who w
ould take over his treatment long term. Alison had agreed readily, nodding, absorbing both what she was being told and what she was surmising on her own. Her husband was permanently scarred in more ways than one. Towards the end of the session, the counsellor had paused, looked at her and said, ‘And what about you?’

  Alison reached the deep end and paused to catch her breath. She breathed deeply, holding onto the side with her fingers and treading water. What about me? Am I supposed to be worried about my husband or resent him? Am I supposed to be endlessly supportive – or rage against the way in which a moral victory has been snatched away from me? He had an affair. He was unfaithful. (With a woman who is now an amputee. How can I compete with that?) He lied to me. But he has been injured and somehow in the great scheme of things that is supposed to make up for the wrong he has done. But he didn’t get bombed because he lied to me. And the lie is still there; it’s just undergone a little plastic surgery, that’s all, and I am supposed to avert my gaze. More lies, but this time of the moral kind. The worst kind of all.

  She rested her chin lightly on her fingers and continued kicking her legs, gently. Pain, she thought, and it was the only clear thought that came to her. I am in pain.

  They waited for her in the entrance hall, sitting on lurid green plastic seats which were so clean and shiny that Paul kept pretending to slip off. After he had picked him up for the fourth time, William let him lie there on his back on the tiled floor, waving his arms and calling in mock distress, ‘Help! Help!’

  William placed his foot gently on the boy’s stomach and wiggled him from side to side. ‘Help!’ called Paul, gurgling with laughter. Then he glanced over to the stairwell and saw his mother.

  William looked up. Alison was wearing her black tracksuit and had her sports bag slung over one arm. She was towelling her short hair. Paul pushed himself out from underneath his father’s foot and charged over, hurling himself against his mother’s legs. Alison dropped her damp towel over his head and he squealed with glee. She picked him up and held him against her chest, pretending to growl.

  William watched them. My wife and son, he thought. The perfect couple.

  In the car going home, they were silent. Paul had screamed for ice-cream for five minutes, then fallen asleep. I wonder what will happen to us, William thought as they drove through Bromley’s quiet, midday streets. I wonder whether we will stay together and have another child and watch them both grow up. I wonder if we will ever sit next to each other in a school staff room and talk to Paul’s geography teacher. I wonder if we will split up, separate, divorce; if Alison will re-marry and move to a different part of the country so we can argue about visiting rights.

  He didn’t know. He had no idea how his life would turn out. It all depended on Alison, really. And Alison was unfathomable.

  Alun Hardy was sitting in his kitchen, eating the dinner that his wife had prepared. He was holding his fork in his right hand, as he always did, and scooping it at regular intervals into the food that lay on the plate which was sitting directly beneath his nose. He always chopped up his food and ate using only the fork. He had done since he was a child. An open newspaper lay in front of him. He read it as he ate.

  His wife was upstairs. She’d eaten earlier, she had said.

  Alun Hardy’s fork had just scooped a large piece of chicken when he heard his wife’s voice behind him. She was standing in the hall.

  ‘You know something Alun,’ Joan said. He continued to eat. She often chattered away when he was eating. It irritated him. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you ever since I got bombed. I should have explained before now but I wasn’t sure how to put it and anyway I don’t think I really worked it out until now.’ It was a Sunday, around teatime. It had been a nice day. The sun had shone. ‘I’ve been making a list.’ The piece of chicken was in his mouth and he chewed slowly, his eyes passing over the TV page. ‘It’s a list of the things I want to take with me when I leave you.’

  Alun Hardy froze, the fork suspended in mid-air.

  ‘I’ve been making it for thirty-two years. It’s got quite long. It started after that row we had over the rabbit hutch the first year we were married. After you’d gone round to Bill and Sally’s I sat down and wrote a list of what I wanted to take with me when I left. It was quite small then: clothes, the tea service, the woodland picture Gilda gave us. My sewing machine.’

  Alun slowly lowered his fork but did not turn round.

  ‘It’s grown over the years, of course. A list like that can get quite long in thirty-two years, as I’m sure you can imagine. Clothes, the tea service, the woodland picture, sewing machine, knitting needles, silver teaspoons, the red saucepan, velvet curtains from the back room, cuckoo clock we bought in Amsterdam even though it’s plastic, vanity unit including all the bits and bobs, wellies. I tried not to let it get out of hand. Only the things I cared about, not things that were valuable, like that three piece suite we bought from Dalton’s Furniture in 1975. It was a lot of money for us then, as you well know but then I thought, I never really liked the blue stripe. It was you wanted the blue, not me. Funny thing is, however long the list got, I never dropped anything off. It got so it was like that rhyme, you know, the old lady who swallowed a fly who swallowed a cat and so on. I never wrote it down. I never forgot a single thing. It just got longer and longer.’

  She paused but still he didn’t turn around.

  ‘Well yesterday I realised something Alun. I didn’t want it. Not any of it. The tea service has got those cups with the little spindly handles you can hardly hold and I never liked that woodland picture. I had to say so to Gilda of course and somehow I got to believing it myself. All these years I’ve walked past it, thinking I liked it.’

  Joan took two steps back down the hall to the cloak-room. She took her favourite coat, grey wool with gilt buttons, from its peg. She put it on. Then she picked up the suitcase she had packed that afternoon and a plastic bag.

  As she passed the kitchen on her way to the front door she stopped and said, ‘So it’s all yours Alun. Everything. I’m not taking any of it, except some clothes and toiletries of course.’ She paused. ‘Oh, and the cuckoo clock.’

  Then she left.

  Helly stood in the ladies’ toilet and regarded herself in the full-length mirror. Around the mirror was the ornate gilt edging with which the hotel bar and lobby also appeared to be covered. When she had first come in she had thought it was posh, but on closer inspection it looked rather tacky. Baroque on the cheap. Beside each of the sinks on her left were little white china trays in which there were selections of coloured soaps. She had already slipped a set of those into her handbag.

  She smoothed her short skirt over her slightly bulging abdomen. She had just eaten a three course lunch, with wine, and it showed. They can’t be after me as a nymphet-type, she reasoned. It must be earthy authenticity they want. Well that’s no problem. She bent her head down and ruffled her hair which was freshly washed that morning, loose and chaotic. Then she flicked her head back up and pouted into the mirror. ‘Well Ms Rawlins,’ she said to herself softly, ‘better not keep Rosylyn waiting.’

  The call had been the first she had received after the telephone line was installed in Rosewood Cottage. (Helly had told Bob and Joanna that she would live with them on two conditions: one, a washing machine; two, a phone.) Rosylyn – ‘That’s Rosylyn with two ys’ – James was a producer for an independent television production company called A-One-O-One. Helly said she had never heard of them. Rosylyn laughed in a twinkly, that’s-alright kind of way and said, ‘We make children’s and youth programmes. We did that documentary on teenage fathers last year, you know, the one where we reunited a teenage father with his own father who was in his thirties.’ Helly didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. ‘Helen, it’s like this. I saw you on Kilroy the other week. Now, we’re about to start making a pilot for a new series where we get young people to interview other young people about what they believe. We�
��re looking for a stable. Complete unknowns. That’s the whole point, you see.’

  The upshot of the phone call was, she wanted to buy Helly lunch in a nice, expensive, central London hotel.

  By the time Helly returned to their table, their dessert plates had been removed. Rosylyn had had cheese and biscuits. Helly had had three-layer orange cake with fresh cream. A coffee sat at her place.

  ‘I went ahead and ordered coffee,’ Rosylyn said, apologetically. ‘I hope that’s okay.’

  Helly picked up her napkin from the gilded, heavily padded chair and sat down. Rosylyn was smoking. An open packet of cigarettes sat on a silver tray on the table. She gave the tray a small push in Helly’s direction.

  Helly had not expected to like Rosylyn, who, over the phone, had sounded like a git. She had been pleasantly surprised. Rosylyn wore a fitted purple jacket over black leggings and a silver bangle set with large bits of purple glass. The jacket was a mistake. It was slightly too tight across the chest and the buttons strained. Rosylyn was a bit of a fatty. Her nails were long but unvarnished. She would start a sentence full of bullshit – ‘Helen, how nice to meet you I’m so glad you could find time to’ – but by the time she got to the end of it, she would have lapsed into normal speech – ‘. . . anyway have a seat where’s our blasted waiter.’ Now that she had met Rosylyn, Helly could understand why she was so interested in her.

  Rosylyn drew on her cigarette. ‘Anything else you want to ask me?’

  Helly shook her head. ‘Maybe I should get this right, just so’s I can tell my gran and grandad later. I get bombed, am rude to people on Kilroy, and end up as a television presenter.’

  Rosylyn laughed. ‘Well, it’s not quite that straightforward. It’s only a pilot, after all. And there’s all sorts of meetings to do first and then there’s no guarantee that the series will be bought. But I do want to get you in to meet some other people at A-One-O-One as soon as possible.’