New Welsh Short Stories (10 page)

It was bad enough at this distance, but … her lovely pale
-
limbed tender boy with his ruffle of white gold hair would be just a delicious snack to those beasts, a sandwich. She had a horrible picture in her mind of Sam gobbled, just his foot sticking out from between the crocodile's teeth like a leftover leaf of cress.

‘Forget about it,' she muttered to Sam, to make sure any lingering hope might be quenched.

That night Mike reached out for her in bed and she felt the lovely scratch of his beard, the comforting warmth of his chest hair and skin. But she couldn't, really couldn't, all she could think of were the twenty
-
four mouths down below in the shadows, stretched into grins. It was spoiling everything, it was spoiling
her
, and it felt like there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Mike didn't know the half of it, how the bloody things meant her days had become a tightrope walk of fear. The nights pools of menace as she imagined them from her bedroom, down in their, their …
pits
.

The next day, the day of Mike's visit to view the efficacy of the crocodile enclosures, Sam became nearly hysterical. Mike looked on helplessly. ‘I think you're being silly and unreasonable,' he told Charlotte. ‘I've spoken to Nigel and he's explained to me about the constructions they're kept in. He's obviously done it by the book.'

After the past hour of exhortations Sam had finally subsided into a piteous state. He sat on the stairs, exactly halfway up, where he could be maximally visible to everyone. The occasional soft sob still wafted through the house, but he was beaten now, he knew that, and the knowledge had crushed him into a soggy and tragic lump. As Mike left with a ‘Sorry, dude', Sam lifted his head and managed to ask in a fading voice, ‘Just tell me when you get back. Tell me everything,
everything
.'

Sam remained where he was for the hour and a half his father was gone, only lifting his head at the sound of the key in the lock.

‘Well?' he asked, slightly accusingly, like Mike might try and get out of giving him a proper account.

‘Rather impressive, actually.'
They were all in the kitchen now and Charlotte noted that Mike was smelling of beer.
‘His system is top notch. The pools thermostatically controlled because crocodiles like a consistent temp…' His eye drifted over to Charlotte and it was obvious from her face that what the creatures
liked
was not even to be mentioned. ‘Everything padlocked
and
bolted and the keys kept in the kitchen so no crocodiles can go round unlocking each other's cages.'

‘Ha bloody ha.' Charlotte moved over to the sink and started scraping carrots.

So they left her to it and she shut her ears and then the kitchen door to the conversation coming from the sitting room. She couldn't bear it, really couldn't physically stand it: scales, claws, tails, eyes, teeth. Cold blood. She couldn't comprehend why they didn't feel the same as her, the same dread as her. Why, in fact, they appeared almost violently interested in what was just over the fence.

‘We could sell, if it really bothers you so much. Move nearer my mother.'

Charlotte had disobeyed their rule and opened the wine
before
dinner. In fact she'd already downed a few good glasses of pinot noir as she'd chopped and stirred. Mike picked up the bottle and eyed the level as he sat down to eat but had the sense not to say anything. He poured himself a glass from the remainder.

‘Who the hell,' Charlotte gripped the handle of her knife, ‘would want to buy a house next to twenty
-
four crocodiles? Who the hell?'

‘Oh, I don't know,' Mike wiped stew from his beard, ‘Mr Gater.'

He chuckled and Sam joined in the game. ‘Mr C. O'Dial.'
The boy snorted, trying to keep mashed potato in his mouth at the same time. Mike, after a fractional pause, a slight impulse of competitiveness because his son's joke was better, cleverer than his – that collapsing of the word crocodile – quickly gave in to proud admiration and patted the boy's head. They both snorted and giggled and little Fay joined in, even though she didn't really know what it was all about.

Charlotte's grip around the knife was almost hurting her now. She brought down the butt of it so it smashed into the table and the bowls and stew pot jumped. Mike and Sam and Fay stared at her open
-
mouthed.

‘I will not,' her eyes blazed, ‘have my legitimate concerns mocked.'

Ever since Sam was born danger had lurked round every corner. The thorns on the rose bush stretched and grew out of all proportion, so they felt like huge spikes ready to poke out Sam's eyes or shred his skin. Cleaning fluids. Buses. Normal everyday things that before had held no hint of menace, that had kept their hearts of darkness well hidden. But even the dog now was a harbinger of toxic poo and potential attack.

After dinner Charlotte wandered out into the garden. The smell of honeysuckle thickened the air, the beautiful Munstead Wood rose she'd planted in the border was nearing perfection, the blooms were the deep red of a rich wine where a drop of black ink had been dropped and darkened it a shade. Even the salad leaves planted in the half
-
barrel on the patio were flourishing, watering them carefully as she did every day. This perfect, perfect world she'd created, and here, into this Eden, her neighbour Nigel had introduced such malevolence, smuggling it right into the tender heart.

Lost in these thoughts she hadn't heard Mike come up behind her.

‘Love.' He put his arms around her and spun her round. ‘Oh, love, love, what is it? What's happening?'

Charlotte's hair was scraped back into a ponytail and her eyes looked hard and haunted. Her chin shook when she spoke. ‘Oh Mike. I'm so sorry. I hate being like this, I really do. But I feel so afraid and angry, and all of the time…'

He cupped her head in his big hands. ‘But there's no need, really. I must admit I was a little worried before I saw…'

‘You never said that,' she cried, jerking her head upwards in his hands.

‘No. But it's natural, I mean as a man, to want to protect. But I've seen it for myself now and I can tell you it's safe, I guarantee it's one hundred per cent safe. There's no chance those guys over there could get out, zero chance.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't even know if it's about that any more.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘I mean about them getting out, it's just their presence…'

‘Whoa. Hold on. Their presence. Their
presence
? You mean this is going to carry on forever? Even though you know there's no way it poses a risk to us and our family? For God's sake, Charlotte…'

‘Don't speak to me like that.'

‘Well I mean, for God's sake…'

‘Speak to him like that.' She wasn't keeping her voice down: ‘Fucking Steve Irwin over there.'

Mike looked horribly disappointed. Charlotte never swore in the old days, but only yesterday she'd called her neighbour a cunt. Something that shocked him more than he'd ever admit.

‘Oh, but of course, I forget, doh,' she smacked her head in the gesture of
I'm so stupid
but of course meant
you're so stupid
. ‘Steve Irwin is dead.'

Mike tried to keep his voice even. ‘Steve Irwin was not killed by a crocodile.'

Every night, after putting the kids to bed, it became part of her ritual. She crept out and stood by the fence, silent, listening until every scratch, every thud could potentially be attributed to them. Sometimes she stayed there for so long, barely breathing, she felt she was communing with them and hearing the breath leaking from the holes in their faces.

She began to watch him too, Nigel. Most evenings he went out, just for an hour or so, and Charlotte guessed he was going to the pub. His figure, his dark hair from behind, was becoming strange to her, like he might not be a human being at all, just a dark shadow
-
shape forming and re
-
forming down the street.

She tried to lose herself in family life: picnics; a school sports day where she ran in the mothers' race barefoot in a pink cotton summer dress, and won; planning a holiday in Cornwall. But really, it all felt a little unreal. Like the holiday might never happen. Like she'd never really won the race.

More real almost was this one thing that she really, really couldn't get out of her mind, however hard she tried. It was something she'd heard – about one of those gated communities in Florida.

In the middle of their homes, their estates, on their perfectly manicured lawns, were often pools, fountains for the delight of the residents. But those pools attracted something else – alligators flooded out from swamps, or got there by stealth. They would lie in the depths of the water at the heart of the community, hidden, only to emerge, hungry and atavistic. Charlotte could see it, the play of the vivid sunlight as the fountain spurted upwards, children playing, old people gliding by on motorised scooters. The bulge in the water, the head, the back, the tail emerging, right there in the centre of civilisation. The scuttle out of the pool and across the lawn…

The charge that the image sent through her was like nothing else – she turned it over and over in her mind. It was the same as what she felt when she was standing by the fence, listening for the breathing. And the strangest thing of all when it came to the emergence, the scuttle across the lawn there was a certain relief too that flooded through her bones that it was exposed at last – it was the feeling she imagined an addict to have, when reunited with the crack pipe.

Evening again, with one bare foot on the freshly dug border, one on the lawn. Both kids in bed. Mike watching telly. She'd been listening to her neighbour's movements for the past hour, walking around his garden. There'd been a scraping and a dragging. He'd muttered to himself. Then the rattling of padlocks and opening of doors. Charlotte guessed it must be feeding time and she curled her lip in disgust.

She heard Nigel doing something unidentifiable then walking back into the house. Then the slam of the front door. It must be pub time.

She stood, with something itching away at her consciousness. And like a creature slowly rising in its tank it came to her what it was, what was different. Nigel had gone out without shutting the back door.

They all did it and told each other it was nuts, after all this was London even if it was a lovely leafy part. But sometimes just popping out for a newspaper or a pint of milk it seemed a silly bother to lock up the whole house like Fort Knox. And of course they told themselves on their return they wouldn't do it again.

Charlotte slid down to the bottom of her garden where there was a pretty stand of Acer trees shielding not one but three compost bins, recycling being very important in their family. She shimmied up so she was standing on a bin, looking over the other side for a foothold. All along the fence on her neighbour's side was a low breeze
-
block wall that looked as if it had once held flowers, but now was just full of arid
-
looking soil and a few miserable weeds. Her neighbour's garden had existed – up to now – in her imagination. Tightly packed. The crocodiles jack
-
in
-
the
-
box creatures collapsed and crammed together. But now she stood on the cusp, her legs triangular, with one foot in either garden, her full
-
skirted yellow summer dress billowing in the breeze.
Trespass
… the word sounded long, drawn out, hissy.
The kind of sound a reptile might make.
Treeessspasssss.

Once she was inside her neighbour's garden enclosure she had the sense of having moved, all at once, into another world. The air seemed different, grey, heavy and thick with a thundery heat. Her bare feet grazed against warm concrete. Down one side of the garden and along the back were a series of long, low buildings, weeds sprouting here and there from the broken concrete. It reminded her of something, she couldn't think… Then it came to her, the crouching barracks, the broken ground – the place had the look of black
-
and
-
white photographs she'd seen of Auschwitz and Dachau.

She stood still and listened. At first she thought she could detect slight movement, a scuttling, the sound of claws on hard surfaces. But there was nothing, just a hot breeze riffling across the ground. All the sheds had a blind look: there seemed to be some kind of special glass in the windows. She walked over the concrete to the row towards the bottom of the garden and lifted the heavy padlock in her hand. She tried peering through the window but all she got was murk.

1945 was it, or '47, the liberation of the camps? Her history was hazy. But she remembered the feeling the photographs had given her: the heavy menace, the terrible secret closed away. The world turning and knowing nothing of your fate. All around you guards with the eyes of crocodiles. Crocodile hearts, minds.