Crazy Paving (19 page)

‘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.

William pulled the duvet back up and lay on his back. Annette’s sheets were a thick, crisp, lemon-coloured cotton, always spotlessly clean. The only items of furniture in her bedroom were
a wooden wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers. On an unpainted shelf next to the bed there was a plain blue lamp. Through the bathroom door he could hear the small tinkling sound of urinating,
then the noise of the flush and the tap running.

As she came back into the room, he lifted back the duvet for her to climb under and snuggle down, to get warm again. ‘How long have you got?’ she asked as they embraced.

‘Ages,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to go to the office this afternoon. Ages.’

They were quiet for a while, their cheeks pressed together. Outside, there was the gentle distant roar of an aeroplane passing overhead, its approach melting without pause into its departure.
The neighbour’s dog barked once, then was silent.

‘What’s she like?’ Annette said. Her voice was quiet in the stillness. Neither of them moved. There was a pause.

‘Physically, or do you mean character?’ said William.

‘Both.’

‘Well . . . she’s very short, with short hair. Pretty. Very organised, I suppose. Dark hair, well not really dark, brown. Contact lenses, I don’t know, what else?’

He shifted slightly in her arms. Annette could tell he was becoming uneasy. She regretted bringing it up, but now she had, she knew she must see it through. She had to nudge him into saying
something disloyal about his wife. He owed her that small victory.

‘So what’s she like?’

‘Oh I don’t know do I?’ William drew back slightly. They looked at each other. He gave a half-smile, as if he had decided to get through this with an off-the-cuff remark. His
expression was a little mean. ‘She’s the sort of woman who always has a tissue. Whatever the situation, you can guarantee she’ll have a tissue.’

Annette returned his smile briefly, then pulled him back towards her so that he would not have the chance to examine her face. So am I, she thought. Oh God, so am I. Why couldn’t
William’s wife be a sloven or a slut? Or just a party girl; that would have done. Loud-mouthed. Slightly fat. But no, she was a tidy, efficient young woman. She was a good mother. She rinsed
the dishes. She always had a tissue. Like me, Annette thought, she is just like me. Then she corrected herself. No –
I am like her
.

William had done what she wanted but she still felt annoyed with him. So she said, quite brutally, ‘Helly knows about us you know.’

He drew back again. She could tell that he was concerned but trying not to show it. ‘You told her?’ he asked, and his voice was careful.

‘No. She guessed. She said it was blindingly obvious – I had no idea – just from the way we were, then the way we changed. You wouldn’t believe it, really. I don’t
suppose we’re as clever as we think.’

William sighed. He rolled over onto his back and Annette turned and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Does that worry you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

They fell quiet again. His honesty had made speech redundant. If he had tried to pretend he didn’t care then she could have caused a scene. She could have asked if he was embarrassed about
her and said,
What do you think it’s like for me?
She suddenly smiled to herself. He hasn’t done this before, she thought. He hasn’t got the lines right yet. She was
glad.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked reluctantly.

She was satisfied now. ‘No, it’s alright,’ she said.

They lay, holding each other.

Gradually, the sky darkened. The clouds grew more dense. ‘No curtain,’ said William. ‘Doesn’t the light disturb you in the summer?’

‘No I like it, look,’ Annette replied, pointing up at the skylight. ‘It’s better than the telly.’ She turned onto her back with William’s arm still underneath
her neck, so that they could lie side by side and watch. The clouds impacted together, rolling from white to grey. A breeze whisked underneath the skylight and rushed over to them before making a
mad charge back out again. William shivered dramatically.

Annette giggled. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Can you hear?’ They listened. There was the distant meowing of a cat, cowering somewhere from the coming storm. ‘It’s
next door’s I think. It’s really funny. Sometimes when the skylight is closed, it walks around my roof, over the window. I’m lying here and I might be thinking about something
else, not really looking, then a bit of me thinks, that’s weird, there’s a cat walking across the sky.’

‘Let’s wait until it gets close,’ said William, pulling his arm around Annette and snuggling up to her. ‘Let’s wait until it’s on the bottom of the skylight,
then we can sneak up and give the window a good yank.’

Annette spluttered. ‘We’d send it into orbit.’

There was a scattering noise across the window. ‘What’s that?’ William asked.

‘Sycamore pods, from the trees,’ Annette replied. ‘The wind must be up.’

They heard a low distant grumble of thunder. The air in the room seemed tight. ‘It’s really building up for a big one,’ William said.

Suddenly, a crash of lightning slashed open the air and filled the room with instantaneous, brilliant white light. The skylight banged open. They both jumped, grabbing at each other, and Annette
gave a small yelp.

‘God! God, that was close . . .’ said William.

Annette jumped up and pushed the skylight shut, then leapt back onto the bed. Then they both sat, naked and clutching, and watched as the first few spots of rain on the window became a
clattering deluge that danced against the glass.

‘I love storms,’ breathed Annette. William turned her face with his hand. Their mouths met. They fell back onto the bed.

They kissed frantically for several minutes, then they lay and watched the rain. Annette’s arms hung around William’s neck. Once in a while, she kissed his shoulder. He stroked the
inside of one of her elbows with a finger.

‘When I was working at Hammersmith,’ he said, ‘there was a storm like this, one afternoon. Worse than this, not much rain but thunder and lightning. Amazing thing. Someone was
nearly killed. It was a woman, one of the managers. She was sitting at her desk working when she decided to go and get a coffee. While she was out of her office, a bolt of lightning came through
the window, the sixth floor I think. It melted the legs of her chair onto the floor and blew up the computer on her desk. Just imagine—’

‘Really?’

‘It was in the papers. Just imagine. If she hadn’t gone for the coffee . . .’

‘You know what that’s like?’ said Annette. ‘It’s like a god saying, watch it. Don’t you think?’ William shifted slightly. Annette pulled her arm out
from underneath his head and they re-adjusted to a more comfortable position. ‘It’s like him saying, okay, I’ve let you off this time, but I can get you any time I like. In the
office. At home. Anywhere I want. All I have to do is this. So watch it.’

William did not reply immediately. The silence was serious. We are both thinking about London Bridge, William thought, but neither of us wants to bring it up. We want to be alone together. He
said, ‘Yes.’

Suddenly, Annette rolled on top of him, grinning. She picked up his left arm and held it above his head. ‘No one can get you though, William Bennett, because I’ve got you
first.’

He brought his other arm around her neck and held her tightly. ‘Help,’ he said. ‘Someone help.’

They held each other very hard and kissed, very softly.

As their mouths parted, he buried his lips against her left ear. ‘Annette . . .’ he whispered into it, and the words tickled. ‘I love you Annette.’

Richard was the sort of man who liked to reward loyalty. Annette had always been a good secretary, although a little straight-laced. Ideally, he would have liked somebody
slightly more flirtatious, someone who met his guests at the lift and flattered them as she walked them down to his office. But she had a good telephone manner and, most importantly, was both
unsuspicious and trustworthy. These, he knew, were assets. There was plenty of the other sort.

He spoke to her at home the day after the bombing and told her to take the rest of the week as sick leave. He would get a temp in for Friday. After he put down the phone he went round to Joan
and gave her a pound. ‘Send Annette a card,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s a nice idea,’ said Joan, looking at the pound.

‘Can you ring Susan from the agency?’ Richard said. ‘I want someone for Friday. They’ve got to have audio. Make sure it’s not that mad Australian they sent when
Annette had the flu.’

It was a mad New Zealander instead. Tara typed at ninety words a minute and talked at roughly twice that rate: simultaneously. While she whizzed her way through a pile of
specifications she told Joan about her fiancé Adam, their flat in Dalston, her mother’s sleepwalking problem and his father’s kleptomania. Occasionally Joan said,
‘Yes’ or, ‘Really?’ By lunchtime, she had a headache.

Joan liked Antipodeans. They worked harder than British temps and didn’t smoke. What she didn’t like was the way their voices went up at the end of half their sentences as if they
were always asking questions.

‘It caused a real problem when she was younger?’ Tara was saying. ‘She used to walk around the house at night? One night, she goes downstairs and Grandma wakes up and
there’s a smell of burning? Grandma goes down to the kitchen? There’s Ma, apparently, standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of milk in her nightie, still fast asleep, and
there’s smoke coming out of the oven?’

‘Really?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Tara said, nodding. ‘She was baking the budgie.’

Helly came round the corner and dropped a pile of papers on Joan’s desk. Helly liked having temps in. It was the only time she was not the most junior member of staff. ‘If Tara
finishes those specs maybe she could do some filing,’ she said to Joan.

Joan looked up, trying to manage a frown to indicate that she disapproved of this kind of one-upmanship. Helly winked.

Tara was saying, ‘Of course my fiancé reckons we should have an orchard instead of a sheep farm? Then we could call it Adam’s Apples.’

As Helly turned away, Joan said, ‘William was looking for you a minute ago.’

‘I thought he was at Fairlop.’

‘He’s just got back.’

Helly wandered down the office. One of the other surveyors was celebrating a birthday and his desk was decorated with cards and balloons, but because it was early Friday afternoon, nobody was
around.

She sat on William’s chair. On his desk was a memo from Jefferson Worth in Commercial. She glanced at it:
As a result of our client’s structural difficulties, it is essential
that this Survey of Dilapidations is carried out as soon as
possible. May I suggest
. . . Ah well, Helly thought, perhaps there are worse things than being the office dogsbody. At
least I don’t have to read that kind of shit.

‘Helly?’

William was standing next to her.

‘Yeah?’ she asked.

He sat down on the edge of his desk and scratched his ear. He seemed ill at ease. ‘Annette told me about you getting her home on Wednesday. She said you were really good, looked after
her.’

Helly smiled. I bet that’s not all she told you, she thought.

William smiled back. ‘I just wanted to say thank you and, well, thanks.’

Helly picked up a pencil from William’s desk and began to play with it, tapping it against the edge of the desk and leaning back in his seat. ‘William . . .’

‘Mmm?’

She tossed the pencil back onto the desk, grinning. ‘Look, you don’t need to worry. I know how to keep my gob shut. Nobody’s talking about you two. It isn’t common
knowledge.’

William pulled a face, not unlike a Father Christmas with an empty sack. Her directness was clearly not his style. ‘Oh, well that’s nice to know. I suppose. Thanks.’

Helly stood up. ‘Relax,’ she said, ‘you pair of egotists. People always think the same way. It’s so important to you, you reckon it must be at least a little bit
important to everybody else. It isn’t. No one cares.’

Richard was coming back from a very nice lunch with a new architect called Brownson. They had been to an oyster bar near the station. Mr Brownson was very keen for work.

As he rounded the corner of the office, he saw Helly sitting at William’s desk and William perched beside her, looking down and smiling.

Richard turned and walked back towards the lift. He would go down to the floor below, walk across and come up the stairwell. He didn’t want them to know he had seen them together.