Alligator Playground Read Online Free PDF Page A

of them might be writers as well. You couldn’t tell. Writers, she found, dressed like everybody else, and other people got so togged up that they might also be writers.
    A man in a three-piece gravy brown suit and a cravat for a tie, crinkly grey hair, and stinking of whisky and aftershave, pinned her against the door. He told her he was a novelist, with the sort of leer not beamed in her direction since living in Yorkshire.
    ‘My name’s Norman Bakewell. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.’
    The titles he ran off reminded her of the names her mother used to read aloud before going up the street to put bets on them at the bookies. Glittering eyeballs winked through heavy glasses that must have cost a bomb but looked dirt cheap.
    ‘I’ve read every one of them,’ she lied.
    His lips were too close. ‘I only came to this firm because they said I could go to bed with any lovely woman who worked here.’
    ‘Written in your contract, is it?’
    ‘I insisted: a fat advance, twelve free copies, and any girl I fancied.’
    ‘And what part of the world do you come from, crumb?’
    He winced. ‘Norman, if you please. A place near Wakefield. The name’s on the jacket of my latest bestseller.’
    The village wasn’t far from hers, so he didn’t need an interpreter to understand the argot telling him to put his head in a bucket of cold water and keep it there for fifteen minutes. He moved to another girl, who had been at the firm long enough not to shove him away so abruptly.
    She was getting undressed for bed, and couldn’t understand why Tom had been so attracted as not only to blab for half an hour, though mostly about himself and what a big shot he was, but even to fetch her another drink and, later in the evening, ask if he could see her home. Her no to this bumped his self confidence into paralysis, but she couldn’t bear him to see the slummy house at 24 Dustbin Grove where she lived.
    Her put-down hadn’t been unpleasant, though however well she behaved she was always aware that her inborn mannerisms might give her away. The split drained her, but now she could feel the beautiful all-powerful woman because even Tom was interested in her. While settling into bed she was sorry not to have come back in his car instead of by the packed Tube. He was sure to be good at making love, certainly better than the deadbeats she’d so far tried it with.
    She had held him off for so long that he became dead set on marriage, though not more keenly than she. He had made as good a husband as he was capable of, and while that seemed all right most of the time for both, it didn’t entirely come up to par for her. Something was missing which he was incapable of giving, a limit he couldn’t pass, unless what she sensed lacking wasn’t really there. Perhaps it was something in herself, though she didn’t see how.
    He thought the fact that he could fuck well covered a multitude of sins, and much of the time it did, but at her most discontented she wondered whether the deadness in him was what stopped the uxorious devotion she craved from coming out. Even so, shesupposed she was as much in love with him as she could be with any man, his only fault being that he gave too much time to his work.
    A year after marrying she had a miscarriage. No, they had a miscarriage. For no known reason, the great event of their lives never happened. Did he wish it on her because he wondered if he was the father? He had no reason to, but every insane notion came to mind, to such stony country had the loss driven her. All talk was loving while she was expecting: Saul for him and John for her, or Rebecca for her and Mary for him. They discussed the matter for days and weeks, filling a chest of drawers with clothes for either sex and any age up to ten.
    Her laugh was acidic. Toys and trinkets, tuckers and bibs, cups and a silver spoon, stashed and no longer looked at, the trunk locked. Lavender was powdered between cot blankets and cot sheets, as her