Barefoot in the Dark (11 page)

‘The first boy,’ she was saying, ‘that I really fell in love with – well, in that way you do when you’re thirteen – he had two chinchillas.’ She sipped the wine again, glancing at Jack as she said this as if it were the most natural conversational direction imaginable. Now that was a woman thing. That ability to hang on to a train of thought while you were busy talking about something altogether different and plop it back into the conversation seemingly at random. Lydia used to do that. They’d be talking about the cladding on the pipes and she’d suddenly say, ‘did you?’ Did he what? ‘Did you speak to Kevin about the life assurance?’ As if they’d had the conversation not yesterday but five seconds ago. But he didn’t want to think about Lydia while sharing airspace with Hope. Didn’t want to think about Lydia, period. Which, happily, he didn’t much. Except as a dusty archaeological artefact capable of throwing light on the present. Like a severed head, or particularly unattractive old urn.

‘I had a stag beetle,’ he replied now.

‘Ugh.’ She curled a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m glad he didn’t. D’you know? One day when I went round to his house we got talking about a previous chinchilla he’d had that had died. And he dug up the skeleton to show me. Isn’t that bizarre?’

‘Very bizarre. Perhaps it was a ritual. Don’t some Amazonian tribesmen give their women the bones of rival tribesmen to ornament their hair?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I definitely remember the jawbone. Chipmunks.
Bless
. How sweet. We have two hamsters, you know. Ant and Dec. ’

Seduce her he must. If that was the right word for it, which Jack doubted. Seducing someone involved an element of corruption, didn’t it? It wasn’t as if he was trying to deflower a virgin. He just wanted to have sex with her, and he needed a game plan. The trouble with women, it seemed to him, was that where sex was concerned, so much of the communication had to be non-verbal. Life would be so much simpler if women were more like men. If he could just ask her if she’d like to make love with him and be done with it. It was all the guesswork that vexed him. All the reading of body language. The fretful business of having to work on assumptions all the time. Was she looking at him like that now because she
did
want to have sex with him, or just because she thought he was nice? He wished he had more yardsticks. More conquests under his belt.

They’d moved away from mammals and on to teenagers by now, occasioned by more rootling in his CD collection, and her comment that his tastes (which were more than half Ollie’s) were a lot more eclectic than most. She seemed not at all as if she were thinking of going. Indeed, her legs, which were now stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankle, seemed like they were thinking of staying, if anything. If such a thing could be read into the wiggling of female toes.

‘Right. I really should be getting back,’ she said. Jack ripped the last page from his mental instruction manual. Clearly not, then. But then again, women worked this way sometimes. This might just be code for ‘tell me you want me to stay’. He stood up and held out his hand for her glass.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘What’s the hurry? Anyway, I thought you were going to have some soup with me.’ He gestured with the glass. She looked undecided.

‘No, I really mustn’t. I have to drive home.’

‘Get a cab.’

‘Listen to you!’

‘Go on. My treat.’

‘I don’t need treating.’

‘Yes, you do. I insist.’

She seemed to like that. She pulled the sleeve of her dress up and consulted her watch. Chewed on her lip.

‘I don’t know –’

‘I insist.’

She pushed the sleeve back down. ‘Oh, go on then. What the hell. I guess I could always cycle over and pick the car up in the morning, couldn’t I?’ She chewed her lip again. She seemed to be waiting to hear something from him. He wished he knew what. This was a very big deal. He wished she’d just tell him what she was thinking.

‘Or you could run,’ he offered. ‘It’s probably about three miles, isn’t it?’

‘Less than that, even. Yes. Yes, that’s a brilliant idea. I’d be going for a run tomorrow anyway.
Yes
.’ She uncrossed her ankles and stood up. ‘Yes. What the hell. I’ll have another glass of wine then, thank you very much.’

Back in the kitchen, Jack was conscious that a highly significant milestone had been reached. Had she not followed him in there he would have mimed a yes! yes! yes! worthy of Beckham scoring against Argentina, perhaps have even knelt down and put his T-shirt over his face. But as she was behind him he had to make do with doing it in his head.

She drank a full two inches from her wine in five seconds, as if some stellar gateway had sucked her in and spat her out again in a different time continuum. As if some internal switch had been flicked. He remembered a bag of Doritos he had in the cupboard, so he got them out and put some into a cereal bowl. Hope took one and munched on it. She was back looking out into the garden again.

‘Where do they come from?’

He topped up her wine glass and got himself another beer.

‘Where do who come from?’

‘Not who. What. Chipmunks. America, isn’t it?’

Jack nodded. ‘The Appalachians or somewhere, I guess. Though I imagine they’re indigenous to pretty much the whole continent, don’t you think?’

She took another slurp of her wine. ‘Only I was wondering if they felt the cold out there. Wouldn’t they normally hibernate in the winter? You know, in the forest?’

Jack didn’t have the first idea what chipmunks got up to in the forest, or, indeed, anywhere else. Mating and eating and sleeping, no doubt. And looking cutesy for the tourists.

‘D’you know? I don’t actually know,’ he said, trying hard to sound like it was something he might have.

‘It probably doesn’t get cold enough,’ she decided. ‘But even so, bless. It can still get pretty chilly. Does he have a heater for them or anything?’

He really didn’t have a clue. Chipmunks. They weren’t in any sex manual, but Jack was all for trusting to instinct, and his instinct told him right now that if he could oblige Hope’s evident affection for small rodents by taking her down and actually showing her the chipmunks, something useful would be achieved. She was clearly into stuff like that. And the flat below had been dark when he’d last looked. Perhaps Leonard was down the pub.

‘Do you want to go down and see the chipmunks?’

‘Oh, I’d love to see the chipmunks,’ she said, putting her glass down. ‘I’ll go fetch my boots, shall I?’

‘Don’t bother. They’ll only get caught in the fire escape grating. It’s not that cold. Besides, we’ll have to be quiet. Just in case.’

‘Oh, if it’s a problem –’

He shook his head. ‘Absolutely no problem. Leonard won’t mind.’ He would. But what the hell. This was business. Jack unlocked the back door.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down and see the chipmunks.’

Hope grinned at him. ‘Barefoot? In the dark? What fun!’

That was the thing about Hope, really. She was up for it. It wasn’t a quality he’d ever given much thought to, but he suddenly realised that was what he most liked about her. She had a natural
joie de vivre
. A way of interacting with life that made you feel it could be something other than basically shite, if only you knew how to approach it. She was giggling now.

Jack held the back door open for her. She was shorter in her stockinged feet – getting on for a foot shorter than him, in fact. It made him feel very masculine. Very protective. Hell, very horny. He clicked up the latch and pulled the door shut behind him, then padded after her down the fire escape stairs.

‘It’s a nice garden,’ she whispered when she got to the bottom. Jack, who had always seen gardens as merely another domestic drain on his football-watching time, thought he’d probably have to shoot himself should it ever seem a good idea to have a garden as a hobby. This kind of garden, at any rate. He had no problem with the mad stuff that Irish guy on the telly did. It was only March, but already Leonard had been out and shaved the lawn, as well as tying the daffodil foliage down in little bundles so they seemed to pepper the flowerbeds like eruptions of cysts. Jack generally tried to avoid opening the back door in daylight, as Leonard could talk about hard-pruning his forsythia with a fact-packed obsession that bordered on mania. Like a serial killer in an interview room when the game’s up and he might just as well revel in his work.

But it was neat and tidy and had big wavy borders. A woman probably would like it, he supposed.

They made their way down the little stepping-stone path, each concrete circle of which was etched with a bird, or a frog, or a hedgehog. Hope’s perfume was scenting the air in her wake, and the breeze, which was more of a wind now, lifted skeins of her hair from her neck. It was cold because it was a clear night, an almost full moon and a smattering of stars lighting their way to the sheds at the end. The birds were quiet, of course, but as they approached they could already hear the chipmunks as they streaked back and forth, up and down, round and round, a blur of striped backs and button eyes.

‘Round here,’ he said, placing his arm around Hope’s shoulder to steer her along to the side of the shed. Which felt very nice.

‘Did he make all this himself?’ she asked.

Jack didn’t know. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. The chipmunks were housed in what was more giant cage than shed. Though the lowest two feet were panelled in wood, the rest of the structure was simply long struts between reinforced chicken wire, and there were also various wooden assemblages in the cage, nesting boxes and sloped runways, up and down which the chipmunks – he thought there were about six of them – moved at great speed, doing whatever it was that chipmunks did.

‘Oh, look, there’s one!’ said Hope. ‘Oh bless. It’s so sweet!’ She had the fingers of one hand laced through the wire.

‘And they bite,’ said Jack. She took the fingers out.

‘But they’re
so
sweet,’ she said again. ‘They’re so tiny, aren’t they?’

‘Tiny,’ agreed Jack. Women always seemed to like tiny things.

‘And there’s another one! Look!’

They looked. Looked for some minutes, in fact. He didn’t think he’d felt so happy in a long time. The chipmunks were being obliging, Leonard’s flat was still in darkness, it was Saturday night and there was a soft womanly body not five inches from his. He still had his arm around her shoulder, moreover, and she wasn’t making any gestures that suggested she minded. But then he felt a small shiver run through her.

‘You’re cold,’ he observed.

‘I’m freezing, as it happens.’

‘Shall we get back inside, then?’

She nodded and leaned forward a little. One of the chipmunks was poised on a branch, still as stone, bar small twitching undulations of its tail. ‘Bye bye, little chipmunk’ she crooned at it, waving her fingers. Women, eh. So other. So exquisitely other. He squeezed his hand against her shoulder. This was shaping up well.

But Jack knew from long experience that when things started shaping up well there was always scope for a downturn. And now one happened.

He’d led the way back up the fire escape stairs light of heart, tall of bearing, decidedly joyous of spirit. But then the back door wouldn’t open.

‘Shit,’ he said, pushing against it.

‘What’s the matter?’ Hope was standing behind him, one step down.

‘The door’s stuck.’

‘Oh dear.’

He pushed it again.

‘Shall I help?’

‘Oh, bugger.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t. It’s not stuck. It’s bloody locked.’ In his haste to implement Operation Chipmunk he must have failed to engage the little lug on the latch properly. Which meant – oh,
damn
– that he had locked them both out.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘Can we get in another way?’

He peered down through the grating. Leonard’s flat was still dark.

‘Er, probably not.’

Hope joined him on the balcony itself.

‘What about round the front? Or is there a window?’ She leaned around him. ‘That window up there, maybe. Look. Isn’t that one open? That’s your bathroom, isn’t it?’

Jack was still shouldering the door, albeit pointlessly. Bloody hell. Why did they put a bloody Yale lock on a back door, anyway?’

Hope moved around him. ‘Funny having a Yale lock on a back door,’ she said.

‘Security,’ he answered grimly. Oh, ho bloody ho.

She’d moved along the balcony now, and was looking up at the bathroom window. ‘There,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘It
is
open. Crisis sorted.’

She looked elfin, almost, with her nose tilted upwards like that. Crisis sorted. Spit spot. She was so sweet.

But sweet or not, it was a very small window. And head height. A good six feet up. Though Jack’s flat was a flat, it was in the kind of house that pleased itself in the matter of floor levels. The bathroom, just off his bedroom, was reached via three extra stairs. And the window, in addition, was set high in the wall.

‘I’ll never get through there,’ he said.

She looked him over. ‘Hmm. You might not,’ she said finally. ‘But I definitely will.’

‘You can’t possibly –’

‘Don’t be daft. I can get through there easily.’ She grinned at him fetchingly.

‘If you give me a leg up.’

Though Jack could imagine all sorts of scenarios that would give him a legitimate opportunity to get his face five inches from Hope’s stockinged thighs, this would not have been one of them. But here it was anyway. On a plate. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Well, unless you’d rather stand out here in the dark all night with nothing on your feet,’ she said. ‘Or call the police. Come on.’ She gestured to him then turned to face the wall, her back to him. ‘Come on. Let me get my foot up.’

So he cupped his hands obligingly while she lifted her leg, then took the weight of her right foot as she hoisted herself upwards, rising, as if a small fragrant wraith from a lake, before swivelling to open the window to its widest and pulling her body over on to the sill. ‘You see?’ she called down to him, grinning. ‘Piece of piss.’

He was still marvelling at her unexpected turn of phrase when the pressure eased in his hands and she was manoeuvring through the window, slithering her body over and down into the room. She was grunting a little. He tried not to look up her dress.