Final Demand

  Indoors he helped her remove her coat. A powder-blue cardigan was revealed beneath. He glanced at the bumps of her breasts and closed his eyes. His mother came out of the lounge.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Taylor, I’m so delighted to meet you.’ Natalie shook his mother’s hand. ‘What a lovely home!’

  There was a pause. Standing there, Colin felt clumsy and male. Even his mother seemed to be wearing some sort of perfume, or maybe she had just squirted the hall. Guests made her conscious of the smell that lingered in the house; he himself never noticed it.

  Natalie cocked her head, listening. ‘Is that a phone ringing?’ she asked, frowning.

  ‘Oh,’ said Colin. ‘That’s crickets.’

  ‘Crickets?’

  ‘I feed them to the lizards.’

  ‘Ah.’ She laughed. ‘They sound just like trill-phones, don’t they?’ She turned to his mother. ‘I work for a telecommunications company.’

  Demure, that was the word. She looked demure, and neat, and polite. Colin hadn’t expected this, not from their first encounter, but then women were changeable creatures. You never knew where you were with them.

  She was looking at a plate which hung on the wall. ‘That’s so pretty, Mrs Taylor,’ she said. ‘Did you buy it on your holidays somewhere?’

  ‘We don’t go on holiday,’ said his mother. ‘You’ll see why soon enough.’

  ‘Tour first, or tea?’ asked Colin.

  ‘Tea.’ Natalie smiled at his mother. ‘I’ve heard you’re a wonderful cook. I could eat a horse.’

  If his mother was thawing, there was only the slightest of signs. Her wintry face gazed at Natalie, who took a third slice of cake.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, munching. ‘Wish I could bake things.’ She glanced at Colin. ‘Not that I could at the moment anyway.’

  ‘He doesn’t like cutting folk off,’ said Peggy. ‘It’s not in his nature.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not staying there long anyway.’

  Alarmed, Colin asked: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I hate the city.’ Natalie turned to his mother. ‘I’d like to move to the country, I adore the country – you know, animals and flowers – that’s where I really want to live. Besides, the city’s no place for children.’

  ‘Children?’ asked Peggy.

  ‘Well – you know – one day . . .’ Natalie sipped her tea.

  This moment of pensiveness over, she brightened. Sitting there, arms clasped around her knees, she asked Mrs Taylor about Colin’s childhood.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Such a soft-hearted boy, always looking after the smallest ones in the street.’

  She asked Mrs Taylor about her husband. He was an embittered man who had lost his farm and who had worked, for an unhappy period, as part of the British Rail catering team. Peggy didn’t tell her any of this.

  ‘He was a good man,’ she said shortly.

  Natalie offered to wash up; Peggy refused. As they left the lounge Colin whispered ‘Something tells me you’ve made a hit.’

  He felt staggeringly intimate with her. Yesterday morning he hadn’t known that Natalie had existed. She had popped up from nowhere and stepped into the centre of his life, wolfing down his mother’s lemon sponge and interesting herself in things he had hardly noticed in fifteen years of living there. She was so vibrant; the house blazed with her presence. All his life he had been dozing and now he was jolted awake.

  He led her upstairs, into his bedroom. The chirrup of crickets filled the air, louder here.

  ‘It’s like being abroad!’ she exclaimed. ‘Club Med or something.’

  ‘Club Med?’

  ‘Somewhere nice and sunny. Anywhere but Leeds.’

  Cardboard egg-boxes were stacked on the shelf. These housed the crickets, until it was time to drop them into the terrariums. He pointed to a tank.

  ‘There’s a mink frog in there. It’s developed red-leg, that’s a serious bacterial infection.’

  The floor was crowded with pens filled with straw. He hadn’t realized they covered such a large area of the room.

  ‘I call this the intensive-care unit,’ he said. ‘There’s two spur-thighed tortoises there, testudo graeca, they’ve got broken shells.’

  ‘You like rescuing things, don’t you?’

  ‘In that one there’s a monitor lizard that’s poorly.’

  She peered at the heap of straw. ‘Where?’

  ‘Better not disturb it.’ He saw the bedroom through Natalie’s eyes. For years he had been used to negotiating his way between the pens, from bed to washbasin, but now he saw how it might strike a stranger. He also noticed the powerful smell. ‘Mam kicks up a fuss but it’s just temporary, till I build another shed.’

  ‘You’ve got more?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said proudly. ‘These are just the invalids.’ He led her downstairs. ‘What I really want is a python.’

  ‘A python?’

  ‘They make lovely companions but I don’t have the funds, not as yet.’ He chuckled. ‘Have to take out a mortgage for one of those.’

  Opening the back door he had a strong desire, which he resisted, to take her hand. Instead he paused, with Natalie at his side, and surveyed his domain. It was impressive, no doubt about that. Sheds of various sizes lined one side of the garden; on the other side a large pond reflected the darkening sky. He led her to it. The perimeter was muddy; her shoes made a shy, sucking noise.

  He pointed into the water. ‘This one’s got your friends in it.’

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘Frogs and toads. Plus newts, all three species – common, palmate and greater crested. Triturus cristatus.’

  She stood her distance and vaguely looked in. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Hibernating.’

  Suddenly he felt deflated. The afternoon had defeated him; he wasn’t up to it. She stood beside him, shivering. He led her into his largest shed.

  ‘It’s nice and warm in here,’ she said.

  ‘Each shed’s got its climate – tropical, desert, temperate.’ He pointed to the electric heater. ‘It’s thermostatically controlled, at thirty degrees C.’

  ‘Huh,’ she snorted. ‘Lucky for some.’

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘It’s OK. So what’s in here?’

  This shed was his pride and joy. He had wired it up with ultraviolet lights, on timers. They hung from the ceiling, illuminating his rows of terrariums. Each tank contained a midget sandy desert, a micro-world in which he had placed twigs and stones in artistic arrangements. He pointed to a tail protruding from behind a rock. ‘That’s a Sudanese plated lizard.’ He pointed to another tank. ‘There’s a couple of Berber skinks in there, just under those leaves—’

  ‘Christ! What’s that?’ She pointed to a saucer. Its contents were moving.

  ‘Mealworms. That’s their tea.’

  ‘They eat maggots?’

  ‘No – maggots are softer and whiter—’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she said.

  He moved her to the next tank. A leather whip was lying languidly on the sand. Its tail trailed in the water bowl like a starlet’s fingertip in a swimming pool. Natalie’s presence made him think of things like that. He opened the lid and lifted it out. Natalie yelped.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My garter snake,’ he replied. ‘It’s all right, she’s a pussycat. Do you want to hold her?’

  Natalie, backing against the wall, made a small noise in her throat.

  ‘Just stroke her head,’ he urged.

  Tentatively she put out a finger, hesitated, and withdrew it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I love all snakes except small ones. I forgot to tell you that.’

  ‘That’s all right then. Wait till I get my python.’

  There was a silence. It was suffocatingly hot. Colin felt a failure. His collection of reptiles was a disappointment to her. To him, in fact, now that she was here. Today they all seemed hidden or hibernating or torpid with antibiotics
. He felt like a father who wants to show off his children and all they do is sulk. Come out from under your pebbles! he urged them. Show her your paces! She would clap her hands in delight and be at one with him in his passion. Here she was, a confessed reptile-nut, and his had failed to rise to the occasion.

  He decided against taking her into the other sheds. They stepped outside, into the biting wind. It was dark in the garden, but the light from the kitchen illuminated her face.

  ‘Oh Colin, that was great!’

  The way she said his name, Colin, made his heart lurch. There, in full sight of the kitchen window, she pulled him to her and kissed him on the cheek.

  Colin’s legs buckled. Suddenly, everything was all right.

  That evening was a momentous one in Colin’s life. He did something which, until that weekend, would have been unthinkable. In doing so, he stepped into another universe, that of the law-breaker, and was changed for ever. It might not have been a big deal, to the world, but it was for him, because he had lived a blameless life.

  He drove his van to Natalie’s flat. It was nine o’clock, he had left his mother dozing in front of the TV. He drove down into Leeds, down Hall Road and through the centre, across the river and south to where the tower blocks rose up into the starry sky. It was a beautiful evening, crisp and thrilling to him.

  The intercom at Meadowview was broken and the door hung ajar. He walked up the stairs. When Natalie opened her front door – she looked surprised, as well she might – he heard the closing music of his mam’s TV show in her lounge. It seemed scarcely believable that the same quiz was playing when he himself had travelled so far, across the canyon that separated his former life from this.

  Natalie must have been washing her hair. This time a towel was wrapped around her head; she wore a black top thing and black leggings, she looked as sheeny as a seal. Exuding an exotic scent, she was utterly new to him, all over again.

  ‘I’ve come to reconnect your gas,’ he said, boldly stepping into her hallway. ‘Bugger the lot of them.’ He didn’t swear as a rule but bugger them.

  She stood behind him as he opened the boiler cupboard. ‘A knight in shining armour,’ she said. ‘Such a rare sight nowadays.’

  ‘Stuff the lot of them.’ He placed his tube on the meter’s u-gauge, for the soundness test. ‘Shouldn’t be doing this,’ he said gruffly. This was something of an understatement. With his spanner, he wrenched off the cap and reconnected the pipes, a surprisingly easy operation if people knew how. Yesterday’s procedure was undone, as it might be when a man who has fallen suddenly in love has his vasectomy reversed. His heart swelled as he tightened the nut.

  Behind him he heard the pop of a cork. He squatted down, struck a match and lit the pilot light. It, too, popped, though more discreetly. ‘There you are,’ he said, straightening up. ‘Back to normal.’ Which was the last thing he felt.

  ‘Colin, you’re a star.’

  He turned round. She was pouring wine into two glasses.

  ‘I never drink when I’m on duty,’ he said.

  ‘But you’re not on duty now.’ She looked at him. A tendril of wet hair had escaped and was stuck to her forehead like a question mark. ‘Isn’t that the point of what you’ve been doing?’

  They stood there, listening to the murmur of the boiler as it sprang into life. ‘Want me to t-turn up the thermostat?’ he asked.

  ‘Come here.’ She moved out from behind the table. ‘Know something, Colin?’ She laughed softly. ‘You’ve turned me on too.’

  Colin snapped shut his toolbox. ‘Got to be going,’ he muttered and scraped past her, heading for the hallway. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  He clattered downstairs. Outside, in a doorway, a group of youths huddled together in a cloud of strange-smelling smoke. Colin beamed at them; they, too, were up to no good. He had stepped into a world of criminality, a world fraught with danger, and all because he had fallen in love.

  ‘Hi, I’m not here but leave a message, OK?’

  For three days Colin flunked it, putting down the phone. Her voice was so breezy; somehow it seemed addressed to anyone but himself. Natalie must have hundreds of friends; a whole teeming life. She was way out of his league; she was an angel, how could he presume to touch even the hem of her garment?

  And then he remembered her smile. You’ve turned me on too. The invitation had been unmistakable. Was it just gratitude for reconnecting her gas supply?

  Colin was in turmoil. There was nobody to whom he could turn for advice. Not his mother, that was for sure. A glint came into her eyes when Natalie’s name was mentioned. Nor could he talk to his mates, whose crude jokes would trample over the rarefied sensations he was experiencing. Colin stood for long periods in his shed looking at the rows of terrariums. Bathed in the glow of his lamps they offered up microcosms of domestic contentment: his pair of blue-tongued skinks, lounging side by side as they sunbathed; his garter snakes coiled so tightly around each other that you couldn’t work out where one ended and the other began. Their embraces rebuffed him. They remained motionless, their black tongues flicking in and out. Ever since Sunday he had felt let down by them. They no longer gave him that old sense of fullness, of a solid centre in his life.

  On Thursday evening Colin plucked up courage again. After all, he had phoned girls before. Hannah something, whom he had met on a rock-climbing weekend, he had taken her out on several occasions. He had held hands with girls from his class at school and sometimes kissed them in bus shelters – a cautious, experimental activity which, though stirring, had somehow left them even more unknowable than before. On two occasions, in fact, he had actually gone all the way, but both times proved to be ultimately dispiriting, as neither girl, being drunk at the time, had remembered a thing about it. No, he wasn’t entirely a novice; just shy. Besides, there were so many other things to do. How did people find time for all that? And then there was his mam.

  This time Natalie answered. ‘I thought I’d scared you off.’

  ‘Want to come for a walk with me, up in the Dales?’ He said it like that, bold as bold. His stutter had gone.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she replied. ‘I love walking.’

  They fixed it up for Sunday.

  All his life Colin remembered that day. When he was an old man he looked back on it as one of unclouded happiness. Nothing that happened later, none of the terrible things, could spoil his memories, for it remained inviolate.

  It was a fresh, sunny day in mid-December; the rocks cast razor-sharp shadows. He loved the rocks, rusty-red, stained with black, breaking from their thin scalp of turf; he loved knowing that even when hidden they were just beneath his feet. He took her up from Pateley Bridge, up towards Brown Bank Head. Great patches of heather spread around them, dark like cloud-shadows. Wearing a furry coat and slip-on shoes, Natalie scampered beside him. The spongy grass put a spring into their step as he led her up the hill; she slipped her gloved hand into his quite naturally.

  ‘Let’s get lost!’ she said.

  ‘You won’t get lost with me,’ he replied proudly. ‘I know these moors like the back of my hand.’

  ‘I mean, let’s get lost and never go home.’ The wind whipped away her words.

  ‘I’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘You’re so nice. You don’t know what shits most men are. Lying shits with the morals of polecats.’

  ‘I can’t bear you being hurt,’ he blurted out. The snow had recently melted; he steadied her as she skidded on the slippery grass.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the things they tell you . . .’ She jumped over a puddle; it was thinly filmed with ice. ‘The things they tell you, just so they can . . .’ Her words blew away.

  ‘You can trust me.’

  She was out of puff now. Leaning against a dry-stone wall, she paused for breath. Her dear nose was reddened by the cold. Manly and experienced, Colin waited beside her. They were up on the plateau now, bleak as tundra, its bleached grass pale in the wintry sun.

  ‘I
love it here,’ he said. ‘The Pennine Way, Haworth, that’s where folk go, hiking and picnicking and whatnot, but here – it’s like you’re alone in the world.’

  ‘Except I’m here.’

  It was then that she kissed him, full on the lips. Her nose was icy, but how warm were her lips against his, how moist her tongue as it slid into his mouth! Trembling, Colin held her in his arms. His tongue probed hers, diffidently at first and then more keenly.

  Then they were hugging wordlessly, her head buried in his shoulder. Stroking her beret, he feared he would burst into tears. He looked up at the sky. Far above them, a bird circled lazily.

  ‘Look!’ He pointed.

  Still in his arms, Natalie followed his gaze. ‘You mean the plane?’

  ‘No, the hen harrier.’ He pointed. ‘And there’s a kestrel, look! It’s hovering, ready to drop.’

  She was gazing at the plane, however, high up in the sky. ‘Just imagine . . . Florida, New York . . .’ A shadow passed over them as it crossed the sun. ‘Wonder where they’re going, lucky sods.’ Urgently she gripped his arm. ‘Don’t you long to get away from here?’

  ‘But it’s beautiful—’

  ‘Not here – Leeds, boring job, no money, working for dickheads . . .’ She sighed. ‘Oh, I just can’t wait for life to begin.’

  Boldly, he touched her cheek with his gloved finger. ‘It has.’

  That evening she took him into her bedroom. It was stiflingly hot, the radiator exhaling illegal heat. Three candles sat in saucers; Natalie lit them, one by one. Colin stood there as she unzipped his anorak and tenderly, expertly removed his clothes. He was strangely unembarrassed; this day existed in a bubble of its own, separated from the timid confusions and inadequacies of his normal life.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re gay.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’re married.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s just . . .’ What could he say? That his experience was pitiful?

  She nuzzled his chest. At the same time she deftly shed her own clothes, yanking down a trouser leg with her other foot.

  ‘Come to bed,’ she whispered, pulling her T-shirt over her head. Underneath she was naked.