Crazy Paving (20 page)

Of course. Now it all fell into place. How stupid of him not to have thought of it. That little tart didn’t have the technical knowledge to work out what was happening with the contractors
or Rosewood Cottage. Richard had seen the expression on William’s face. He had been looking down at her as she leant back in his chair, her head thrown back. Richard knew that nervous, male
look. He had used it himself a hundred times.

In the lift, he leant back against the wall, his arms folded, pursing his lips. Good, he thought. Now he knew everything. Now he could make his move.

Everything they said about Alison Bennett was true. She was trim and efficient and intelligent. She had been good at her job – a personnel assistant – and now she
was a good mother to William’s child. She also worked part-time in a local shop, a couple of hours here and there to help them out, when Paul was at nursery, and she was learning French.

She also knew that her husband was confused. William was the sort of man who was unusually kind to the people around him when he was miserable, because he felt guilty about resenting their
happiness. When she had first identified this trait, not long after they were engaged, it had thrown her a bit. Whenever he did anything kind or pleasant, she found herself looking for the hidden
motive. After a while, she began to love him for it, although she trusted him less. Alison had married with her eyes open. She was that kind of woman.

William had been confused for some weeks now but then it was March, a confusing month, she always found. She was going to give him another fortnight before she sat down and tried to work it all
out.

She was saying this to herself on a Thursday afternoon. Paul had thrown a tantrum for a solid half an hour, then fallen asleep. When she had explained to him that she could not mend his
favourite truck he had told her he hated her. He loved his Daddy, but he hated her. She had resisted the temptation to say, fine, I’m not exactly wild about you either at the moment. After he
fell asleep, she read a Sunday magazine; a few moments of peace.

When the doorbell rang, she went to the front door still holding the magazine. She opened it a fraction.

A man stood on the step. He was dressed in overalls and wearing a heavy jacket with the collar turned up. ‘It’s on the front here,’ he said. ‘Do you want it round the
back?’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Alison. She looked past him. Parked on the pavement was a workman’s van. Music tinkled from the cab, where a young man in the passenger seat was waiting
for the older one. Then she saw that on the small square patch of grass in front of the house was a pile of wooden slats wrapped partially in tarpaulin and bound with rope. The top slat appeared to
be a door of some sort.

‘Do you want it round the back?’ the man asked again. ‘Only it’s a bit parky and I’m in a hurry.’ He was already backing away down the path.

‘What is it?’ Alison called after him.

‘Garden shed,’ the man responded, backing away towards the gate.

‘What?’

The man paused, pulling a face. He fumbled around in one of the pockets of his big jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Bennett,’ he said. ‘Number fifteen.’

Alison nodded.

The man raised his hand in farewell, as if that settled the matter.

After the van had pulled away, Alison turned back into the hall, put down the magazine and slipped on a pair of loafers. She went out into the garden. Why on earth had William bought a garden
shed? They already had one.

She parted the tarpaulin slightly. The door on the top had new chrome hinges, shiny bright. It looked like a nice shed.

She went back into the house, shaking her head. Now she knew for sure. Something was up.

‘Send it back? Send it back?’

‘Yes for God’s sake. You heard. Send it back. We don’t need a garden shed. We don’t want a garden shed. What’s more we don’t want to have to pay for
it.’

Alison closed her eyes. She sighed, very slowly. ‘William, where the hell are we supposed to send it back
to?
We don’t know where it came
from
. There was no
delivery note, nothing.’

William paused before crying out, ‘Well for God’s sake, how could you let somebody just dump a shed in our garden without asking for a delivery note!’

‘Maybe it’s a prize draw, maybe it’s a mistake – I don’t know. It’d be stupid to throw it away. It’s much better than the one we’ve
got.’

‘You chose it, not me.’

‘Yes, William, I know.’ Alison’s voice was strained. Her teeth were gritted.

At this point, the sound of Paul calling out from upstairs became audible. ‘Mar-
mee!
Mar-
mee!
’

Alison sighed again, shook her head and left the kitchen. William picked up the newspaper that was on the table in front of him and threw it on the floor.

Arthur Robinson put down the phone. It was nighttime at Robinson Builders. His operatives had gone home. He was working late, alone, in the rickety pre-fab he used as his
office. The only sound was the wind outside and the companionable burble of his gas heater. He was tired. He was stiff. His Opal Fruits were finished and all that remained was an unchewable,
brightly coloured scattering of wrappers. Life seemed grim.

Richard was asking for too much. It was one thing wanting Benny to watch the cottage – although Richard still had not explained why. What he was after now was something else altogether.
What if it went wrong? What if they got caught? Arthur leant back in his seat, trying to arch his back to ease the stiffness. The effort brought his capacious stomach into contact with his
aluminium desk and pushed it forward, making a small screechy-scrapy sound on the wooden floor of the pre-fab.

The sound of Arthur Robinson’s desk masked another similar sound which occurred simultaneously in the yard outside – but the wind carried it up over the wall and off into the chill,
smoky ether of Kennington.

Arthur heaved himself out of his chair and went over to the heater. Standing over the warmth, his pudgy fingers splayed, he waved at it with both hands. Perhaps it was sex; perhaps that was what
was absent from his life. He and his wife hadn’t had it for years but, truth to tell, he didn’t miss it. What was copulation when there were so many different types of pastry in the
world? And with pastries, you only had to wash your fingers. Richard still had sex, he could tell. He was that kind of person. The world could be divided into two types, really. Those who had
regular intercourse and those who preferred cake. He had infinitely more respect for the latter.

Then he heard the sound: a twisted wail which ended in a squeak followed by a choking noise, as if the voice making it had reached the limits of its pitch and was protesting. Arthur went over to
the portakabin’s grimy window, rubbed it with his sleeve (which made no difference) and peered out into the night. The lantern outside scarcely lit the yard but he could see the vague hulks
of machinery, the sheds and – in the corner – Benny’s igloo.

The cry came again. Arthur shook his head. ‘Poor little sod,’ he muttered to himself. He took his old sheepskin waistcoat from the hook on the back of the door and slipped his arms
into it, then went outside.

It was not possible to knock on Benny’s igloo – knocking on rubber produced no sound – so Arthur knelt at the opening and peered in. The interior of Benny’s home was dark
but he could hear squeaking and scuffling.

‘Benny . . .’ Arthur called softly, scared of waking him too violently, ‘Benny . . . it’s Senior Robinson. You’re having a dream . . . perhaps you should try waking
up.’ There was no Junior Robinson, Arthur had explained, but Benny still preferred this term of address. Polite people, the Venezuelans.

There was another sharp cry, louder this time, followed by a sudden flurry of movement, then silence. Arthur Robinson waited, crouched by the entrance. He had never dared to venture into the
igloo and had told his other operatives that nobody else should either, on pain of being sacked. Even the homeless deserve some privacy, he informed them sternly. What Benny did in there was
anybody’s guess: slept; dreamt; cried out. It was no life.

Eventually, Benny’s small confused face appeared in the opening. He nodded, a little abashed. It was the only time that Benny smiled, when he was embarrassed.

Arthur felt sympathy for the man, so he did not mention the nightmare. ‘It’s like this Benny,’ he said, pulling his waistcoat round him and holding it across his chest with his
arms, although he was a man who never felt the cold. ‘We need you to take a closer look at that cottage. You’ve done really well. We’re very pleased. But we need you to actually
get inside, that’s why we asked you to check out the back and so on. He wants you to wait until the old couple go out. It shouldn’t be difficult.’

Benny had mimed sash windows when Arthur had asked him about the Appletons’ security arrangements.

‘The man, I mean, my friend . . .’ Arthur hesitated, ‘he wants you to cause a bit of trouble. Not tonight. When he gives the word.’ Benny frowned. Arthur Robinson frowned
too. He found this difficult. ‘You know, mess things up a bit, while they’re out, mind.’ Arthur could not bring himself to repeat what Richard had really said over the phone.
Tell him to piss on the carpets if he feels like it
, Richard had told him.
Crap on the sofa. Wank off into the breadbin. The works. I want a mess. I want it nasty
.

The thought of asking anyone to wank off into a breadbin was more than Arthur Robinson could bear. It was a Tuesday night. Annette was in her house in Catford. She was lying on her bed, naked.
It was half past nine at night and William had just left.

She lay for a long time, imprisoned by the texture of her skin. She felt too heavy to move. She could still feel the imprint of William’s hands either side of her head, the feel of his
fingers in her hair. Her skull felt fragile. Inside its brittle carapace, her mind turned. I am in love, her mind said. I love. At the same time, her body resented William’s absence. The feel
of the sheet beneath her naked back was insubstantial. The pillow did not move. She struggled to feel resentment but could only conjure warmth. I am lost.

She began to shiver, so she rose and pulled on her towelling robe. Then she padded lightly to the bathroom and leant her elbows on the sink, staring into the mirror. The robe was white, with a
pale green trim and green belt, loosely tied. Beneath her throat, her fine skin plunged in a dark V-shape, an arrow between her engorged breasts, pointing downwards to the glowing regions of her
thighs. She gazed at her face. Her skin was clear. Her eyes were bright. Her hair was ruffled into a light, fluffy mess. She was beautiful.

She did not bathe. She pulled the robe around herself and went downstairs. It seemed a shame to draw the curtains and turn on the lights. She hesitated, unwilling to make the room look as it
always did. She put the television on but turned it off almost immediately – watching it seemed unbearably normal. Instead, she turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial until she found
some classical music, then made herself a sandwich to the reassuringly unfamiliar tinkle of a harp. Afterwards, she left her plate and knife next to the sink and went to lie on the sofa with her
arms folded behind her head and her legs dangling over the side. She gazed at the ceiling.

When she sat up to look at the clock on top of the television, it said eleven thirty.

She was running water over her sandwich plate when she heard the knock at the door. She froze.

She stood still for a moment, her mind computing possibilities. There were a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Catford but they wouldn’t call this late. The only probability was William.
No, that wasn’t at all probable. Even so, she ruffled her hair and ran her tongue over her teeth as she crossed the kitchenette.

She went to the curtain which she kept across the alcove to the doorway and peered round. Through the wavering glass panels she could only see a dark figure, too tall to be William. She paused,
then leant forward and slid the chain on. Then she opened the door.

The man standing on the step was in his fifties, tall, with grey-brown hair receding at the temples and a heavily lined face. He gave a half-ironic smile and the skin around his brown eyes
crinkled. He pressed his lips together, shrugging slightly.
Ah well
, his shrug said.

He looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘I know it’s late. I was meeting a friend in Lewisham. I was going down Rushey Green. You can always tell me to get lost.’

She closed the door, unslid the chain, then opened it again. He stepped inside.

‘Hello Girlie,’ he said, and held out his arms.

William was home by ten o’clock. All the way home, he could feel Annette. As he parked his car outside the house he wanted to turn to her, as if she was sitting next to
him in the passenger seat. As he put his key in his own front door he wanted to step back, and usher her in first.

Alison was in the sitting room, watching the news. He went and stood in the doorway. The top of her head was just visible above the sofa. He wanted to say hello but was worried that his voice
would not sound normal.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Alright?’ he asked as he turned and went into the kitchen.

The kettle had boiled recently and steam was curling from its spout. He turned it on. If I smoked, he thought, now is the moment I would want a cigarette. He went back to the door of the sitting
room. ‘Tea?’ he asked.

‘No thanks,’ the top of her head replied.

The kettle was already boiling as he returned to the kitchen. It clicked itself off as he pulled a mug from the pile of crockery sitting in the drainer, which collapsed with a small clatter. He
tossed a teabag into the mug and poured on the water. While he waited for it to brew, he stared at the black square of uncurtained window above the sink. His face seemed distant and pale, the face
of a man he had never met.

While Annette filled the kettle, the man sat on the sofa. ‘So I finally got a decent price,’ he was saying. ‘Two years on the market. What a nightmare. I
thought it would never go.’