Crazy Paving (25 page)

After he was gone, there was a period of time when she felt he might come back. Five minutes, say, in which he could be in the toilet and popping back to pick something up, or getting to the
lift and remembering a phone call he had to make before he left. For this transition period, she remained sitting stiffly at her desk, typing with her back rigid and her fingers flying over the
keyboard, making it rattle like a machine gun. Then the moment came when she knew that he must by now be out of the building, walking down the street, going down the steps to the tube, whistling
away from her on a train. He was gone. There was no chance that this scene was going to turn out differently.

She knew she was about to cry again. Raymond was standing a few yards away, talking to a surveyor. A post lady ambled past, dropping Richard’s afternoon correspondence onto Joan’s
desk. There were too many people around for Annette to run to the toilet without someone noticing. Her only choice was to stay at her desk and wait for them to wander away. She prayed that nobody
would come over and speak to her. If they did, she would be finished.

She picked up her audio headphones and put them on so she could at least keep her head down and look engrossed in her work. She returned to the schedule Richard had given her that morning,
forcing her mind to concentrate on building construction. But language itself seemed against her, falling apart in the same way it had in the early days, when she had first loved William.
Minor
amendments to the layout will be required to comply with racking and benching requirements
. Racking and benching. She was being racked and benched.

Her eyes were so brimful with tears that she could not see the screen. The lines on the schedule swam and wavered. She typed furiously, unable to see the numerous errors she must be making,
determined only to keep working, to work as hard as she wanted to run. Richard’s voice continued evenly.
Repair clad
ding. Stop. In addition, comma, ensure prevention of water
leakage from gutter down front elevation. Stop
. Her leg began to tremble and her foot caught on the pedal of the audio machine. She pressed and her foot slipped. She pressed again.
Richard’s voice repeated solemnly,
stop, stop, stop
. . .

She bit her lips. She drew breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She kept her head down and kept typing.

That evening, Annette arrived home as dusk was beginning to gather over Catford. She walked from the station through the small residential streets, where flowers were showing
off in the neat terraced gardens. Early evening, spring, the beginning of things. The end.

Her house was the same as it always was.

She made tea, still wearing her coat, feeling too tired to take it off and hang it up. She took the mug and sat on her sofa, staring out of the patio doors onto her small square patch of garden.
She sipped gently at the hot drink, with her coat still on and her handbag on the cushion beside her. It was like being in a waiting room.

She tried to tell herself it was peaceful, while knowing it was merely silent.

When the phone rang, she jumped so hard that tea slopped over the edge of the mug and onto the sofa. She was lifting the receiver before she even had time to hope.

‘Annette?’

It was her mother.

‘Hullo, Mum.’ Her tone of voice was chirpy, the stock reaction whenever her mother called. No matter how tired or upset or annoyed she might feel, she was always chirpy.

‘Is that you, Annette?’ her mother repeated.

No, thought Annette, it is a burglar talking falsetto. Annette is upstairs tied to the bedstead with the cord from her dressing-gown. I am about to do unspeakable things to her.

‘Yes Mum, it’s me.’

‘How are you? Are you alright?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘What have you been doing?’

It was the same every phone call. What have you been doing? This question did not mean, what have you been doing that was interesting or worthy of note? It did not mean, has anything happened
that you would like to tell me about? It meant, give me a full account of your week. Tell me from start to finish: how work was, whether you went anywhere, if you spoke to anybody, what television
programmes you have watched and, most of all, how the weather has been in London on each of the days since we last spoke.

Annette drew breath. Then she began. ‘Monday was okay. Things are rather busy at work at the moment. Joan, the other secretary, is on holiday this week and the new budgets are being
prepared so I’ve had to . . .’ She told her mother about her week. It took twenty minutes, slightly shorter than usual because it was only Thursday. Annette’s mother usually rang
at the weekend, to get a full account.

‘How are
you?
’ It was always a relief to get to this part of the call.

‘Fine, dear, as well as ever. I was just wondering whether you’d made your mind up about Easter.’

Ah, Annette thought. Now we are getting to it. ‘No Mum, I don’t think so. I think I’m going to stay here. I’ve got things to fix. The house. There’s some stuff
I’ve been waiting for a chance to get at.’

‘Oh . . .’

Annette had learnt by experience that the worst time to visit her mother was at the expected times: Christmas and Easter, the festivities. It allowed too long a period for a build-up. When she
arrived, they would both be so full of dread it was sometimes hard to speak. Visits home were easiest to get through when they were spontaneous.

‘What about this weekend?’ Annette said, in a moment of inspiration. What else would she do? Sit wondering if William would call?

‘Oh . . .’ Annette’s mother always pronounced
oh
in exactly the same way, whether she was pleased or disappointed. ‘Oh, yes. Yes alright, dear.’

By the time the phone call was over, the remainder of her tea was cold. She went back to the sofa. I am nothing, she thought. I am a dirty little liar who never tells her mother anything. My
life is something that I hoard away like a squirrel hoarding nuts. Squirrels are also vermin.

The following day after work, Annette caught the train from Victoria. The unfamiliar route was a pleasant variation:
Oxted, East Grinstead, Uckfield
– hardly an
adventurous itinerary, but different at least from
New Cross, Lewisham, Hither Green
. Such is the detail of my life, she thought, sitting against a window with her weekend bag on her lap.
Small change.

She visited her mother roughly every two months. The last time had been in February, when she had brought a bag of old tights, for stuffing cushions. Her mother was fond of collecting objects to
use in some way to change or decorate her home. One of her favourite activities was tearing out advertisements from colour supplements. Last time, she had shown Annette one for a collection of
china butterflies. She was paying a monthly subscription. Every other month, she received a butterfly through the post. There were a dozen to collect.
So lifelike, so real
, the
advertisement said in curly letters above a glossy picture of a hand painted fine bone china Cabbage White. Below it were the words,
Butterflies of the World
. Annette had been seized with
the desire to grab a biro and add the word,
Unite
.

By the time she arrived at her mother’s house, she was tired and hungry. Her mother would have a ready-made pie in the oven. When she heard Annette’s knock, she would turn on a ring
on the electric cooker, on top of which would be sitting a saucepan of peas. They would have an early night.

The door opened. There was her mother, again. The same, again. Annette leant forward and pressed her cold damp cheek against her mother’s, which was warm and papery.

‘I’ve got a pie in the oven,’ her mother said. ‘Minced beef and onion. I thought we’d have an early night.’

Later, Annette vomited the pie neatly into her mother’s clean white toilet. There was a heavy smell of disinfectant and the water in the bowl was slightly blue. Annette
pulled the flush, then added some more bleach from a green plastic bottle that sat on the floor, and flushed again.

As she came out of the toilet, her mother passed her on the landing. ‘Night night dear,’ she said.

‘Night,’ Annette replied.

Her mother knew about the vomiting – she could not help but know. Their house had been built in the sixties and the walls were thin as greaseproof paper. Ever since it had begun, when
Annette was thirteen, the sound of her puking and choking must have filled their small semi, sometimes for nights in a row, then sometimes not at all for several months. She imagined her mother
lying in bed and listening. She imagined her ironing downstairs, and listening. She imagined her turning the telly up.

Her father had known about it, known consciously, in a way that her mother had not. Annette was sure of that. She saw the way he looked at her sometimes, half questioning, half annoyed. The
start of the vomiting coincided with the early years of her adolescence, the years when her father had begun to follow her around. He stood in her bedroom doorway while she did her homework, most
evenings, and asked her if she wanted any help. He would not allow her to go shopping on a Saturday afternoon unless he gave her a lift to the high street, even though it was only a ten minute
walk. He would not allow her out of the house at all unless her coat was buttoned and she could prove she had gloves in her pocket.

When she was twelve, she demanded to be allowed her first trip to the cinema. She wanted to go with her friend Bridget. Bridget’s mum would pick her up, drop them off and bring her safely
back.

Later on that evening, she overheard her parents arguing in the kitchen.

Bridget’s mother had hair which was the most beautiful colour Annette could imagine for hair, a thick glossy mass of orange. ‘She puts mud on it,’ Bridget had confessed, in
tones which suggested she wanted to die of shame. As Bridget’s mother drove them to the cinema she shrieked with laughter and said, ‘Your parents, Annette! Dearie me, you poor love! I
thought they were going to ask to see my licence!’ As she parked the car outside the cinema she said, ‘What on earth are they going to do in a couple of years’ time when
it’s boys you want to go out and see?’ She was shaking her head.

‘I’m sorry about my mum,’ Bridget muttered as they waved her off from the cinema steps. ‘She’s so embarrassing.’

‘I like her,’ said Annette.

They were early. There was no one at the ticket desk although the sweet counter was open. ‘I’ll get some,’ said Bridget, ‘but we’re not allowed to start eating them
until we’re inside.’

By the time the ticket desk woman had ambled back, a small queue had formed. The people behind them were mostly children of their age, some a little older, a couple of adults. It was as they
were turning away with their tickets that Annette saw – standing by the cinema entrance a few feet away – her father.

Their eyes met. He made no attempt to greet her. He did not smile. She wondered momentarily if he could have a double, but no, this man was wearing her father’s heavy coat. As they
wandered slowly away from the ticket desk, he stepped forward to take his place in the queue.

‘Here,’ said Bridget. ‘I want a drink as well. Do you?’

Annette shook her head. ‘Let’s go in.’

‘In a minute.’

She felt her father walking behind them as they followed the usherette’s torchbeam down the aisle. As they edged along a row of seats, she sensed him edging along the row behind them.

The cinema was two thirds empty. The bright rectangle of the screen threw out flickers of pink and grey. Bridget sat down and slumped back with her knees up against the seat in front of her.
Annette removed her anorak, folded it neatly and put it down on the seat beside her. Then she sat down too. Bridget pulled their sweets from her jacket pocket. As she opened the packet wine gums
popped out, sprang into the air and dived down into the darkness beneath their knees. ‘Oh bugger,’ giggled Bridget. Behind them, Annette heard a cough.

The film began; an adventure. Annette forgot about her father. Once every few minutes, Bridget’s clammy hand would sneak over and drop a wine gum into hers. They both chewed noisily. When
a spider dropped down the heroine’s neck, Bridget leant over and said, ‘Yuck . . .’

It was approximately half-way through the film. Annette had slid down in her seat and put her knees up, like Bridget. She had lifted her long hair clear so that she could lean her head back on
the top of her seat. She went to sit up. And found that she could not. The man sitting in the seat behind her had leant forward and had rested his forearms across the top of her seat, on top of her
hair.

Perhaps she had made a mistake. If somebody was leaning on her hair accidentally, then when she tried to move again, they would get off. Experimentally, she lifted her head. It was only possible
to move an inch or two. The man was leaning firmly on her hair and he had no intention of moving, although he must realise that she was trying to lift her head. She sat back down. Bridget passed
over a wine gum and Annette put it in her mouth, chewing automatically. It seemed flavourless.

The man did not move. Her neck became more and more stiff. She was desperate to shift her position. She hardly saw the rest of the film. Instead, she concentrated on her physical discomfort.

Towards the end she suddenly sneezed, and found that she could move. She sat up and glanced behind her. The man had gone.

When she got home, she found her parents in the sitting room. They were both reading newspapers. Her mother looked up. ‘You got home alright, then?’

‘Yes. Bridget’s mum brought me.’

‘Good.’

Her father looked up as well. He stared at her. She left the room.

For the first week after he died, Annette hardly noticed he was gone. He had had a heart attack at work. She was fifteen. His boss had come round to the house in the middle of
the afternoon, just after Annette had arrived home from school. She had opened the door in her grey pleated skirt. The boss stood there, clutching a plastic bag to his chest with one hand. The
other hand hung down by his side, clenching and unclenching. He looked at her and said, ‘Is your mum in?’ She nodded, not moving. From somewhere inside the house her mother called out,
‘What is it?’