Final Demand (15 page)

Chloe shivered. The wind blew a plastic bag along the pavement; it bowled along, rolling over and over towards her as if it had her in its sights. The sodium light cast a shadowless glow. In the city, she thought, you never saw moonlight bathing the streets. In Cheddar's village, however, she would stand on a hilltop and raise her face to a sky which was spangled with stars and where a full moon hung, its light bathing her face with an eerie beauty. None of the other stuff would matter any more – her father's strictures, her mother's anxious and protective love.
Do something, see the world
, said her dad. She would show him! Wait until she eloped to Yugoslavia, or whatever it was called now, see his face then! First she would have to find out about Serbs and Croats. And what about the Muslims, where did they fit in? She had never listened to that part of the news. Cheddar, however, wouldn't criticize her for her ignorance. Unlike her father, he was a kindly and patient man.

Goodness, it was cold! Chloe wrapped her jacket tightly around herself.
April is the cruellest month.
Where had she read that – in school? She was no longer tipsy; just happy. Never before had she felt such closeness with a man. How pitifully immature, by comparison, was her hopeless lust for Lennox! Heading for the main road, she thought of Cheddar's skin, ravaged with acne scars. His appearance, too, had caused him suffering. This was another thing they had in common. They were soul mates.

Chloe stopped at the kerb. This wasn't the main road. It was a one-way street, empty of traffic. At the far junction, traffic lights switched to red. She had never been here before.

She looked up. The moon had disappeared; all that remained was a milky bloom. It seemed to have shifted way to the left. Surely it should have been ahead of her?

She turned and hurried up a side street, keeping the milky
glow ahead of her. She wasn't alarmed; she was cold and tired, and her shoes rubbed, but inside she was warm. She knew that Cheddar was drawn to her, that sooner or later he would come for her. With his great hands he would pluck her out of her present existence and they would be happy.

The street divided into two. She seemed to have lost the moon entirely. The sky was suffused with orange. What produced that glow? Maybe she had been walking in circles and she was now heading back to the city centre. Ahead, a church spire rose up, needle-sharp. Its illuminated clock said four twenty. Chloe felt confused: it couldn't be that late, surely? She seemed to have been walking for hours.

She checked her watch: ten past two. The clock must be broken. The night was dislocated, as if she couldn't catch up with herself. As she stood beside the church she heard the faintest hum. It sounded like traffic on a motorway. But which motorway? Maybe the hum was inside her head.

Chloe didn't panic. She turned and walked briskly back the way she had come. If she found the route back to the discount store she could start all over again. Suddenly she wished, with all her heart, that she were safely home, snuggled under her duvet.
Where have you been, pet?
her mother would say, standing in the doorway in her dressing gown. She would bend over Chloe and kiss her goodnight.
Thank God you're home. You should have phoned.

But she couldn't phone, could she?

Chloe decided to retrace her steps back into the city centre. She had an urgent need to be amongst people, even a few drunken stragglers, and to see some lights in the windows. If she found her way to Piccadilly Station, perhaps she could pick up a cab from the rank. Unless the last train had gone.

Chloe walked faster. Of course it would be gone. The station would be empty. Bags of rubbish were heaped on the pavement; bulging with shredded paper, they glinted in the lamplight. They were so full that the tapes had come unstuck. Had she come this way before? She passed a Chinese takeaway
but this wasn't Chinatown; the buildings were bigger and more spaced apart. And here she was, crossing the canal when she had never crossed it before. She hurried past office lobbies, dark and silent and waiting for Monday. She passed an underground car park, its illuminated sign saying SPACES. She didn't recognize any of it. Or did she? Her father always said she was dozy.
Pay attention, for goodness' sake!

It was then that she heard the car. Faint at first, but growing louder. It was coming up behind her.

For a moment Chloe was frightened. Then she thought: It's him, of course. She had known Cheddar would rescue her, she had sensed it from the start.
You walk alone
? he had asked, frowning. He was anxious about her, she knew it. How? Because they were destined for each other. They had recognized it the first moment.

Cheddar had tracked her down, in his Polo, and he would drive her home and kiss her on the doorstep and soon she would be calling herself Mrs Chloe whatever-it-was, his beautiful, unpronounceable foreign name.

Chloe kept walking. Smiling to herself, she thought: Play hard to get. The car drew up beside her. She turned, her face lit with a smile.

But it wasn't him.

SATURDAY DAWNED PINK
and dewy; there was a balminess in the air, like summer. By mid-morning Colin, who was digging a pond, had stripped to his shirtsleeves. The clay was heavy; he heaved out a spadeful and dumped it on to the pile. Beside him the rubber lining was folded, ready. By the end of the weekend it would be finished, and then he could transfer the tadpoles (for the spawn had hatched) from his old pond to their new home. The deeper he dug, the wetter the clay. He heaved it up and flung it behind him.

‘Look, Mum, he's going to put a dead person in it!'

‘Dominic – ssh!'

A family had moved in next door. The child, who must have been standing on something, gazed at him over the fence. Colin straightened up.

‘I'm not burying anything,' he said. ‘It's for frogs.'

‘Ugh,' said the child and disappeared.

The woman pushed back the hair from her face. She too was perspiring. ‘He watches too much TV,' she said.

‘Used to be a real pond near here.'

‘At night he checks the doors are bolted. Funny, isn't it, a kid doing that.' She turned away. Over the fence he saw the top of her head moving back towards the house.

Natalie was still asleep. She was missing the best of the day but Colin was used to it by now. She should do just what she wanted. Knowing that she was there, dreaming under the duvet, was enough – more than enough; it filled him with amazement. He kept thinking that one day he would go upstairs and find her gone. Simply gone, as if she had never been.

He heard the doorbell ring and went through the house. Two men stood in the porch.

‘Delivery for Mr Taylor. One flat-pack garden shed.'

Colin stared. Behind him he heard footsteps on the stairs; Natalie appeared, tousled from sleep, in her T-shirt and knickers. ‘It's for you.'

‘But love, I'm building them myself.'

‘It's a present.' She kissed him on the cheek. He could see the men eyeing her up and down. ‘They've been taking you ages. I took pity on you. And this one's much better.'

‘But we don't have the money.'

She nuzzled him. ‘We do.' She smelt of sleep, of their secret nights together. Her face, bare of make-up, looked scrubbed and vulnerable. He loved her like this – the private Natalie that was his alone. ‘I know you want to move the rest of your pets here, your mum's getting fed up with them. This way you can bring them here quicker.'

She still called them pets but he didn't like to correct her. She wasn't interested in the scientific side of it, his breeding programme and rehabilitation unit. He said: ‘The boy next door, he thought I was a murderer.'

She laughed. ‘Just what I said when I saw you first – Christ, it's the psychopathic gas fitter!'

He suddenly thought: It's true. I could kill someone. If a bloke harmed my wife I would bludgeon him to death. Since meeting Natalie he had had so many surprising thoughts, so many new sensations, that this one hardly gave him a shock. Given the circumstance, who could predict their reactions anyway? Most people never had to find out.

‘I don't want you slogging your guts out to buy me things,' he said.

‘I don't slog my guts out.' She tickled his chin. ‘Trust me.'

By Sunday he had lined the pond and edged it with stones. He only had to install the pump, fill it up and pour in the anti-chlorine solution and it would be ready for its occupants. It was another blazing day – too hot for April, unnaturally so; the weather was weird nowadays.

Colin looked at the shed panels, stacked on the lawn. To be
frank, he would have preferred to build his own. Those ready-to-assemble jobs were so flimsy that they fell to bits after a year or so. But he could hardly tell Natalie that.

At noon she appeared in a bikini and lay down on a blanket.

‘You got suntan lotion on?' he asked. ‘Don't get burnt.'

She lowered her sunglasses and grinned. ‘Just carry on with your erection.'

He blushed and turned up the radio. The news came on. He pulled open a plastic bag of screws – totally inadequate, a quarter-inch – and gazed at Natalie as she lay there sunbathing. She looked white and defenceless, like a hatched grub.

‘. . .
The young woman found murdered in Manchester this morning has been identified as
—'

‘Ugh!' said Natalie. ‘Turn it off.' She rolled on to her stomach.

After work on Monday, Natalie found a bunch of flowers stuck behind her windscreen wipers. No note, but she could guess. Stupid bastard, she thought. Anyone could have seen him doing it. It was a miracle he hadn't set off the alarm.

Phillip had been appearing in the office more often during the past few weeks. Ostensibly talking to Mrs Coles, his eyes had been fixed on Natalie. Her ex-lover looked gaunt – thinner and somehow diminished. Somebody – guess who? – had cut his hair too short. It didn't suit him. Natalie ignored him. From time to time, however, she had discovered gifts on her desk; the previous Thursday she had found a box of Terry's All Gold, wrapped in ribbon.

She dropped the flowers on to the floor of her car where they remained, withering in their wrapper. She had no time for Phillip; she was surprised she had even fancied him. Her life was far too engrossing.

The evenings were lighter now. Colin had erected his final shed, the one she had bought him, and was going to fetch his last load of tortoises. They had recently emerged
from hibernation. ‘Like me,' he had said. ‘I was hibernating too.'

He spoke like this nowadays. The tongue-tied Colin was developing into a talkative young man; love had loosened the words from him.

‘Come with me,' he said. ‘You haven't seen me mam for weeks.'

Natalie shook her head. His mother made her uneasy. Those narrowed eyes seemed to bore into her soul. Mrs Taylor – she couldn't bring herself to call her Peggy – was the only person whom Natalie feared.

‘She'd rather see you on her own,' Natalie said. ‘She sees precious little enough of you as it is.'

Afterwards she thought: Don't be stupid. I've got nothing to worry about.

Still, the next day her heart jumped when Sioban whispered: ‘There's a thief in our midst.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Natalie.

‘Someone's been nicking things. The Walrus found out.'

‘Ah.' Natalie paused. ‘You mean, stationery and stuff.'

‘He's beadier than he looks, the old sod.'

Sioban ground out her cigarette. Since Farida had gone matronly and given up the fags, Sioban had become Natalie's smoking companion.

‘NuLine's such shit,' said Sioban. ‘Who do they think they are, Big Brother? If I could think of a way of fucking them up, big-time, I would. What's a few paperclips, for Christ's sake?' Her cheeks reddened with irritation. ‘We all do it. It's not stealing.'

‘No,' said Natalie. ‘It's a redistribution of wealth.'

At five thirty, however, she had another unwelcome shock. When she went down to the lobby, two policemen stood there. They were stationed in the doorway, stopping staff and searching their bags.

Natalie registered this at a glance. She turned round and ran back up the stairs. At the first-floor landing she paused, thinking fast. She had two cheques in her wallet, the day's hits. If her bag was searched, they might be found.

She hurried into the toilets. Nobody was there. She went into a cubicle and shot the bolt. Rummaging in her wallet, she took out the cheques. Where could she hide them? It was a warm day; she wore just a skimpy top and skirt. She thought for a moment, then she stuffed the cheques into her knickers.

She stood there, breathing heavily, and gazed at the toilet-paper dispenser. Calm down, she told herself. They won't be looking for cheques anyway. The paper felt awkward between her legs. She imagined hobbling downstairs, her legs bowed like a Greek granny, and burst into giggles. She made a swift calculation: £226.40 plus £212.25 equals . . . £438.65. All that money, nestling against her pubic hair. She thought: Nobody can call me a cheap date.

The main door opened; she heard its sigh and click. No footsteps, however, no cubicle door opening. Whoever it was must be standing at the mirror, silently applying their lipstick.

Natalie waited for them to leave. She remembered past moments in toilets – snorting cocaine when she was temping at a firm of accountants; trying to insert her diaphragm, in her pre-pill days, in a Greek karzey with flies buzzing around and a German called Hans waiting to take her down to the beach. Several shags, including the one with Phillip. Toilets held fond, illicit memories for her. And now, wedged in her knickers, she had funds for a weekend for two in Paris, all-inclusive, plus that pair of fake snakeskin shoes she had seen in Pied a Terre. Real snakeskin would be better, she thought, thinking of Colin's python. What a creepy animal it was, wrapping itself around his body.
It kills by squeezing its prey
, he said.
Suffocates it to death.
All his reptiles were creepy, either sitting there motionless, eyes bulging, throats throbbing; or else suddenly, horribly quick.