‘Oh shut up.’
‘It’s you I love—’
‘So you’re going to leave her then?’
There was a silence. The rain had stopped. By now the car park had emptied.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out and fuck off.’
Tears pricked Natalie’s eyes but she was not going to cry, not her. She drove along the motorway, back towards Leeds. The oncoming headlamps blurred. Traffic was heavy; it was Friday night, people were on the move. How senselessly busy they all seemed! It felt like a week – a month – since that morning, when she had driven in the opposite direction. Time had been dislocated, its joints swinging loose. She couldn’t believe her own stupidity: why hadn’t she seen the signs? Was she really such an idiot? And there she was, almost falling in love. Almost dreaming up a future.
Natalie left the motorway and drove towards the city. Lights dazzled her, blurred by her angry tears. Revving up, she swung out to overtake the car ahead. An oncoming car hooted, blinding her with its headlights. She braked and slipped back.
As she drove into Leeds she thought: So that’s the end of my plan then. It was almost a relief, to feel it finally dissolve away. Strangely enough the affair with Phillip, which might have turned it into reality, had made it irrelevant.
She stopped at some traffic lights. It was a crazy idea, truly crazy. Maybe Phillip had sensed something odd about her, from the start. Oh, the bastard.
The lights changed to green. Natalie pressed the accelerator pedal. Nothing happened. The engine had cut out.
Behind her, cars hooted. Flustered, Natalie tried again. The engine turned over, grindingly, but didn’t catch. She tried again: nothing. This time it was for real; her car truly wouldn’t start. Behind her, cars reversed. A huge Mcdonald’s lorry rumbled past. It was then that she noticed the warning light on the petrol gauge. The tank was empty.
You think you have fallen as low as you can get, that you’ve hit rock-bottom. Then the floor collapses and you fall still further. As Natalie trudged the two miles home – after a lengthy wait, she had persuaded a passer-by to help push her car on to the pavement, where it would no doubt collect a ticket – as she trudged past lit pubs, laughter issuing from them, other people’s Friday nights, she thought: Fuck it all. It had started to rain again; her shoes were sodden, she was freezing cold. She passed an NT Phone Shop, empty and brightly lit. NT, IT’S YOUR CALL. She had tried to phone a cab but her mobile battery was flat and when she tried to use a phone box it swallowed up her twenty-pence piece. Cars hissed past her as she walked along the main road.
Betrayed and sodden, Natalie trudged along the pavement. One of the cars slowed down and parked, a few yards ahead of her.
Natalie stopped. There was nobody around; just a sliding stream of cars passing. She pretended to inspect the wall. Somebody called Kevin had sprayed SUCK MY KNOB on it. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the car, waiting.
Thursday last, a girl was stabbed along there. Natalie started running. She darted up a side street. That girl who was raped? My brother was at school with her . . . She ran past a row of houses due for demolition, their windows boarded up. Calm down, she told herself. She hummed a Sheryl Crow song: A change, change, change will do you good . . .
Then she was out on a main road, somewhere she didn’t recognize, and Kieran waited at the traffic lights. Her heart leapt. There he was, on his motorbike, clouds of exhaust billowing into the night air.
A damsel in distress . . . such a rare sight nowadays.
‘Kieran!’ she yelled. She had never been so pleased to see anybody, in all her life. They would sit in a pub together, like old times. All that rancour would be forgotten.
‘Kieran!’ she shouted again, but he didn’t hear.
She rushed up to him and tapped his leather jacket. He lifted his visor.
She stepped back. ‘Oh. Sorry.’
By the time Natalie reached home she had made a decision. This time she would really do it – cut her losses and jack it in. Monday morning she would give in her notice; she had had enough of the whole bloody business. As she climbed the stairs, hurrying before the light switched off, as she fumbled, with frozen fingers, for her keys, she thought: I’m getting out of here. I’ll go to London, it’s high time I bailed out. After all, my mum did it enough times. I’m bright, I’ll get by. Something will turn up.
Next morning she was woken by the ring of the bell. She wrapped herself in a towel and opened the door.
A young man stood there: square, sturdy. He wore some sort of official work-clothes.
‘Sorry to disturb you, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m from the gas company.’ He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I hate this bit.’ He had a broad Yorkshire accent.
She moved aside. ‘The meter’s through there.’
‘No.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I – er – regret to inform you that I’ve come here to disconnect your supply. For non-payment of your bill.’
Natalie stared at him.
‘Here’s my ID.’ He held out a card. Sheathed in yellowing plastic, it showed his photo, Registered Gas Fitter and his name: C. TAYLOR. ‘My authorization,’ he said.
She bent closer to read. ‘Taylor.’
He nodded. ‘That’s the name. Colin Taylor.’
A moment passed. Then Natalie, clutching her towel around her, put out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.
Surprised, he put down his metal case and shook her hand.
‘Come in,’ she said, and smiled at him.
Chapter Three
COLIN, FONDLY KNOWN as Stumpy to his friends, was one of life’s innocents. Unworldly, generally of a cheerful disposition, he was bemused by the litany of violence he heard on the radio when he was driving hither and thither in his gas-board van. How could folk do that to each other? It was beyond his comprehension, for he still believed, against all the odds, in the innate goodness of human nature. Thinking the best of people gave him, at this point in the world’s history, a quaintness, as if he should have been born in another era. As if he should have remained a boy.
Which, in a sense, he had. ‘Stumpy’ suited him, for he had the rolling gait and eager, open face of a chubby little boy in dungarees, running open-armed to embrace what life had to offer. If it were a slap he would pick himself up and start all over again for he was a born optimist, a simple soul, and everybody loved him.
Nobody loved him more fiercely than his mother. He had lived with her all his life and she protected him with a passion. Her name was Peggy and she came from a long line of grim, determined Yorkshire farmers, who worked the unforgiving land and who had no truck with displays of feeling.
Ah, but she had feelings, powerful ones, and they centred around her son. Colin was her only child, born to her in her middle years when all hope of motherhood had faded. His father was long since dead. Her son was a miracle to her, though she would have gruffly pooh-poohed such a word. They lived together on the edge of Leeds, on a bleak estate where rain lashed the grey stucco houses. Colin was her sunshine, he was the love of her life.
Colin was twenty-five. Whether he was still a virgin was a source of some speculation to his mates. They were not aware of any girlfriend, past or present, and he expressed no interest in women. In the pub, when they told dirty jokes, he simply looked blank. Sometimes he tried to join in, to show willing, but he hadn’t a clue. And he was not a bad-looking chap – shortish and squat, rugger player’s thighs, and a charming, twinkling smile that lit up his broad face. They just wished he would stop wearing that woolly hat, but Colin was a loyal sort of bloke, he refused to be parted from it. Once he attached himself to something, it was for keeps.
All in all he was a kind young man; that was why he hated his job. He had trained as a gas fitter but recently he had been transferred to disconnections. The pain of it, ringing a doorbell and seeing the smile wiped off a face . . . His heart bled for them. What was their crime? Murder? Child molestation? They simply didn’t have the
funds to pay their bill.
That Saturday, the morning that would change his life, Colin had already made two calls: a black woman who had broken down in tears and an elderly woman who had slammed the door in his face. He wished he had been a postman. In general, they were regarded with affection; this seemed to persist even if they were the purveyors of bad news. Everyone, except dogs, liked postmen.
So it was with a heavy heart that Colin trudged up the stairs of Meadowview – a misnomer if ever there was one. It was an ex-council block, smartened up and sold off some years before, but the neighbourhood was a poverty-stricken one; he had visited it on many occasions to perform his melancholy task. He pressed the doorbell of Flat 28.
The young woman who opened the door looked neither startled nor suspicious. This was unusual. Judging by her attire, or lack of it, she had probably been in the bath.
Colin, shuffling and looking at his feet, explained himself. She turned away to lead him to her boiler. He tried to avert his eyes – she wore only a towel – but he couldn’t help glimpsing her shoulders. They were frail and bony, and her skin was as freckled as a wall lizard. Stumpy was one of the few people in Britain who had successfully bred these in captivity. This warmed him to her. He was proud of his hatching record: six eggs in the past year.
‘To be honest with you, I don’t want to do this,’ he said, following her into the kitchen.
‘Don’t then.’ She flashed him a smile. He felt a shifting sensation inside. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and forget all about it.’
She adjusted her towel – it was in danger of slipping. Colin felt a blush rising up his neck. The poor girl must be frozen. He took out his tools. ‘I’m ever so sorry,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing I can do to persuade you?’
His face reddened as he switched off the boiler (Potterton Suprema, 40,000 BTUs). ‘They’d only send somebody else and you’d pay another disconnection charge.’
‘They charge me for this? Great.’ The tap hissed as she filled the kettle. ‘Oh well, if that’s the case, I’d rather have you.’
As he turned off the main gas cock, he explained the procedure to her: how once the bill was paid she would have to make an appointment for a reconnection and there would be another charge for that. ‘It’s daylight robbery,’ he said, ‘downright senseless.’ He heard the rattle of china. Was she doing it all with one hand?
‘It’s just that I’m broke,’ she said.
He got out his spanner. ‘They don’t give a monkey’s, these big outfits . . .’
‘They don’t care if I freeze to death . . .’
‘Not a monkey’s about ordinary folk . . .’
‘People like you and me. Sugar?’
‘Two, please.’ He leant his weight against the spanner, pressing hard. The blooming union was stiff.
‘NT, where I work – you know it?’ she asked. ‘They don’t even send out a reminder. They send out a final demand and if the customer doesn’t pay within seven days they cut them off, just like that, the tossers.’
He flinched at her language. ‘Don’t I know it,’ he replied. ‘They did it to me and a whole crate of tortoises died.’
‘Tortoises?’
Finally, he disconnected the pipe and capped it. ‘’Cos the bloke at the airport tried to ring me, see, and he couldn’t get through.’ He sat down heavily at the table. She passed him a mug of tea. ‘They know me there, the customs fellas at Manchester, they know I’ve got a way with them.’ He pushed some crumbs into a pile. ‘Not wanting to blow my own trumpet, but I’m a bit of an expert. It’s all down to, I suppose, that I like them and they like me.’
‘Who do?’
‘Tortoises.’
He looked up at her, his face ablaze with pity. ‘They’re banned from being imported, it’s illegal, but sometimes these crates arrive from these places, Turkey, places like that, and my pals in customs, they smell a rat—’
‘Or a tortoise—’
His eyes pricked with tears. ‘They’re in a terrible state, half of them dead – dehydration, starvation. There was this crate last summer, fifty-four Hermann’s tortoises, beautiful creatures . . .’ His voice broke. ‘Only eleven responded to resuscitation.’
She gazed at him. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘Cold-blooded murder. No other word for it. How could folk be so cruel?’ He wiped his nose.
‘I love tortoises,’ she said.
‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘Love them. Funny little shells and funny little faces. And so sort of . . . slow. In fact, I love all those kinds of animals.’
‘Reptiles, you mean?’
She nodded. ‘I adore them.’
‘Like, lizards?’
She nodded.
‘Snakes?’
She nodded again. The sun had come out; it flooded the kitchen with light.
He gazed at her wonderingly. ‘What about amphibians?’
‘What?’
‘Frogs and toads?’
She nodded. ‘Them too.’
The sun shone on her shiny, curly hair. It was the colour of his mother’s treacle pudding. He realized, with surprise, that she was really pretty. ‘Never met a lass who liked frogs and toads.’ He paused, overcome with emotion. ‘I breed them too.’
‘Where do you keep them?’
‘At home.’
She lit a cigarette, drew in the smoke and exhaled. He coughed. There was a silence as he shifted the crumbs into another pile. He thought: I’m alone with a nearly naked young woman. A wave of panic hit him. He climbed to his feet.
‘Better be p-p-pushing off.’ He always stuttered at moments like these. Not that they came very often. ‘Now remember, you can’t use your gas cooker either—’
‘Can I see them?’
He stared at her. ‘See what?’
‘Your frogs and toads and everything?’
Colin’s jaw dropped. He gazed at her as she sat at the table. The towel was knotted expertly around her chest, leaving both of her hands free. She tapped ash into a saucer and smiled up at him.
‘You want to see them?’ he asked, stupidly.
She nodded. Quite a lot of her chest was revealed. This, too, was scattered with freckles. Were all females this freckly? His experience was minimal; mostly limited, in fact, to the swimsuited girls he saw at the leisure centre. She was gazing up at him, her eyes bright, waiting for an answer.
He gathered his wits. ‘How about, you could c-come for tea,’ he suggested. ‘Give her warning and me Mam’ll bake us a cake.’
‘Who is she? What does she want?’
‘She wants to see me reptiles, Mam. She’s that keen.’
His mother gave him one of her looks. He knew her face so well: grimly set, for the most part, but sometimes weather passed over it, like clouds or – more rarely – sunshine, darkening or lightening an outcrop of rock.
‘I said you’d bake her one of your sponges,’ he added.
Colin was devoted to his mother. The thought of her dying, as she one day must, filled him with fathomless panic. They were everything to each other; they knew each other through and through. He would walk through fire to earn her approval. Oh, he had her love, he knew that, but sometimes it was an uphill struggle to please her. Life had been hard for Peggy, her husband and sisters dropping off one after another. There were just the two of them left, clinging to the raft.
He watched his mother as she opened the larder door. She moved slowly, her joints stiff, but he knew better than to help her. She put a bowl on the table and crumbled flour and butter together. Her knuckles were hugely swollen; she worked more slowly than usual. From the way she sat, rigid, he knew that she knew that this was something special. Already he could feel a loosening between them.
‘Don’t stand there like a lump,’ she said. ‘Go down the shop and buy me a couple of lemons.’ She lifted the flour and let it fall through her fingers. It was graceful, the way she did it. ‘There’s a good boy.’
It was the next day, Sunday. Natalie was due to arrive at four. Outside a gale blew. Next door’s motor scooter had fallen over; its plastic cover snatched and billowed in the wind. Colin, propping it back on its stand, worried about Natalie, her thin frame freezing in her unheated flat. He couldn’t get the image of her, all but naked, out of his head. What did she look like, dressed? He had kept his eyes lowered; he could hardly remember her face.
Colin wore his tartan shirt, freshly ironed by his mother, and a clean pair of jeans. Waiting for Natalie, he saw his street through her eyes: the boarded-up windows, the single tree with a bin liner caught in its branches. The houses were dwarfed by the pylons that marched behind them, across the high ground. Nothing stirred except pieces of plastic; Rowton Crescent was sunk into the torpor of Sunday afternoon. Where were the kids? Colin had grown up here, he had played in the street with his gang. Nowadays children had disappeared like the lapwings on the upland meadows. Their cries were silenced.
Suddenly, powerfully, he wanted kids of his own. He longed for them, he longed to be a father, tying their little laces. The idea made his legs weak.
‘Come in, you’ll catch your death!’ his mother called.
He pretended not to hear – his own small rebellion. It was ten past four. He looked up and down the road. How would Natalie travel? By car? By the unreliable bus service from the centre of Leeds that stopped at the main road, six streets away? He should have offered to collect her, that was what people did.
But she wasn’t coming anyway. The whole idea was too far-fetched. Natalie was a chimera, dreamed up in yesterday’s sunlight. She didn’t exist, she wouldn’t come. Why should a young woman like her want to have tea with him anyway?
And then he heard it: the thud-thud of a sound system. It grew louder, pounding down the street as a silver Honda hove into view. It juddered to a halt beside him.
Natalie stepped out. Colin’s heart turned over. How pretty she was! And quite different, fully dressed. In her flat she had looked maybe thirty years old. Alarmingly experienced, anyway. Now she seemed like a young girl arriving at a birthday party – buttoned-up coat, velvet band in her hair.