But how was that possible? How on earth could something so patent, so profound, so grotesque have escaped his attention formerly?
His mind rapidly flipped back to a full hour previously:
The initial meeting…
Shaking Wesley’s hand… (they did shake, didn’t they?)
Making him a cup of coffee…
Wesley, sitting on the swivel chair, efficiently turning over the printed sheets of property details whilst chatting away, amiably…
He was suddenly very warm. Unsettled. Almost queasy. He clenched his hands together and tightened his buttocks, his gentle brown eyes clambering over Katherine’s white walls like a couple of stir-crazy arachnids.
Warm? He was boiling. And it was no mere coincidence. Because the heat was one of Katherine’s trademarks –
The heat
– well, the heat and rodents, more particularly. No. The heat and rodents and peach schnapps. She literally lived on the stuff. Locals joked –and it wasn’t funny –that she took it intravenously.
Antique clothing, too, of course. And beansprouts, obviously. And mahjong (Chinese backgammon, to the uninitiated), and sex, and basic engineering. Yes. But mainly the heat. It was her thing. Always had been.
It was just so… just so Katherine.
Ted swallowed. Tried to clear his throat. Couldn’t. Because it… it agitated him –The heat
– he’d always found it disquieting. In fact he was currently feeling more than a little off-colour –uncomfortable –sticky –out of sorts –
No
– out of place – that was it –like he was trespassing or gatecrashing or sneakily intruding…
Of course she’d given him the key –
Yes
– he was here legitimately –
Yes
– but wasn’t he… wasn’t he facilitating something, just the same? Something improper? Something unscrupulous? Something… something unseemly?
Ted’s mind began clicking. He felt over-wound and jerky. His skin was damp but the air in his lungs seemed horribly scant and thin and dry. His head felt all cotton-woolly. So did his tongue. Sweat trickled into his right eye. It stung. He blinked repeatedly.
Wesley finally broke the protracted silence between them. ‘This is twisted, Ted,’ he murmured, continuing to stare approvingly at the mango-stone creature. ‘Does she actually sell these things?’
‘Yes. Yes she does sell them, occasionally,’ Ted’s voice was flat. His tongue struggled to juggle with the weight of its syllables. He drew a deep breath, ‘and if you don’t mind my asking,’ he paused, frowned, ‘where did your fingers get to, exactly?’ (Where did they get to? Oh Lord)
After he’d spoken, he couldn’t quite believe what he’d said. He sounded drunk to himself.
Wesley’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but his eyes did not shift from the mango-lion. ‘I fed them to an owl,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘an eagle owl. Years ago. In an act of penance. I trapped my brother in an abandoned fridge. Christopher. Chris. When we were kids. A prank. He died. He was my right hand.’
They both stared for a moment, in silence, at Wesley’s right hand.
‘And you know what? I like this house,’ Wesley continued calmly, as if these two thoughts were somehow naturally conjoined. ‘Will I be able to move in immediately?’
Ted was still dreamy, ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.
Wesley’s head jerked up so sharply on receipt of Ted’s answer that it was almost as though –Ted thought idly –it was being operated from above by strings. He very nearly glanced at the ceiling to test the validity of this theory, but instead found himself noting –distractedly –how tall Wesley suddenly appeared and how tight his mouth seemed. Tight as… tight as… Tight as two navvies after ten pints. Tight as the lid on the only free jar of peanuts in a well-stocked hotel mini-bar. Tight as a good lie. Tight as a gymnast’s thighs. Still tighter.
One. Two. Three seconds passed by, and then… Fuck. What on earth was he…? Ted blinked and came to as the sharp and piercing gaze of Wesley’s disfavour focussed full upon him; piranha-mouthed, marlin-nosed, pike-eyed… Wesley’s face suddenly seemed as barbed and impenetrable as a razor-wire fence around a missile silo.
Oh bollocks.
Ted allowed himself a single, small, involuntary judder before the inestimably professional estate agent inside him stood to attention, clicked his high-polished heels together, smiled, saluted, and snapped straight back into action.
He rapidly re-assessed the situation. ‘What I mean is that I’d have to run it past Katherine first, before I could actually promise you anything…’ he spoke obsequiously, ‘and you’d be wanting to take a look at the spare room, of course?’
What have I done? he thought. Katherine Turpin will roast me on a spit, cut me into small pieces and devour me… if I’m lucky. Then…
An owl? An eagle owl? Is he crazy?
‘Fine. So run it past her.’
Wesley shrugged –as if he believed no process so mundane as this could hinder the immense rolling stone of his destiny –then slowly began to deflate again, like a cheap plastic paddling pool at a children’s party.
‘And I don’t need to see anything else,’ he added, ‘I’ll just bring the rest of my stuff over later,’ he smiled, ‘about three… three-thirty.’
He held the mango stone creature aloft and inspected it once more, very thoroughly, his cheeks lifted and reddened by a spontaneous glow of good humour. Then his focus shifted.
His expression remained constant –calm, cheerful, insistent – but his eyes now held Ted’s hostage in a penetrating gaze, as his other hand moved down slowly –deliberately –towards his bulging jacket pocket. He rummaged around inside it for a while until he located the particular thing he was searching for and carefully removed it: a clean, white, newly truncated, ten-inch-long lamb’s tail.
Wesley removed the tail with a small flourish, and laid it out gently –almost reverently –onto the workbench. Then calmly, brazenly, he nested that strange mango-stone creature where the tail had formerly been: deep and safe within its own dark stable of itchy tweed.
In a perfect parallel, Ted’s own dear heart gradually descended –down into his shoes, where it continued to beat faithfully, just as before, but closely bound now, and constricted by laces.
Five
Look for love
Where liquid is solid,
Where 62 fell
(46 still to fight for)
From Beaver to Antelope,
From Feather to Bear,
Kick your heels, sucker,
And find nothing there
Dewi came back early for lunch, each weekday, just so that he could watch her. She arrived home at twelve fourteen –twelve seventeen if she stopped to buy smokes on the way –twelve nineteen if there was a queue at the newsagents. She rode a fold-up bike. A Brompton. Tiny wheels. Bright red. It was three years old.
In winter she wore brown lace-up boots and grey woollen mittens: an irresistible combination which never failed to bring the sting of tears to his eyes. He could not think why. It was just one of those things.
She made him feckless and emotional. He was her fool. But he took strength from the fact that he was nobody else’s. In every other respect, he told himself –and others told him –he was a rational man of poise and depth and stature.
Floors were his business. Wooden floors. He prepared them. He restored them. He laid, sanded and varnished them. And he had a sideline in wooden decks, and sheds and verandahs, all of which he designed and then built himself, single-handedly.
He worked hard. Like a demon. He worked until his shoulders locked, until his knees buckled, until his feet swelled and his palms blistered. He believed in work and his work sustained him. It gave him purpose. It gave him nourishment. It gave him reason. And he, in turn, gave it everything.
He embraced activity the way a hungry man embraces his first cup of tepid soup in too many days: with both hands and
great satisfaction. He took what he could and was always grateful for it. He had been raised that way: to be proud yet never haughty; to be particular yet never fussy.
He was an old-fashioned creature, by and large, but with exquisitely modern parameters. He liked to do things simply and well, using the same traditional techniques his father had taught him, but twisted, very gently, into the realm of the contemporary. His father had been a boat-builder, just west of Rhyl. His grandfather, too, before him.
He understood wood completely: sheathing, siding, clapboard, cord; walnut, ebony, hickory, beam. He understood wood.
He liked to recycle. He could rip the back and the belly out of an old house (he had deals with local demolition men; they knew his number), the doors, the bannisters, the stairs, the pelmets even (he’d pick the corpse clean and leave it shining –he was meticulous as an ant), and then he’d transform what he’d retrieved into something new.
He tolerated the fashions in flooring, the fads: the pale finishes, the beeswax, the crazy veneers. He was no wood snob, although he knew perfectly well what he preferred, what his tastes were. But he kept his opinions to himself. He was subtle and enigmatic; as discreet as a shadow.
He did not smile secretly over the things people did or said, desired or demanded. He could not sneer. He had mouth and cheeks and chin, like other folk, but no spare space on his face for duplicity. He was straight as the shortest distance between two points.
And yet, for all of his sensitivity, he was not an especially sad or bleak or ruminative character (although others might well consider he had reason to be). He did not mull or muse or muddle miserably through. He was quiet, often. He was calm yet never vacant. He was as sweet and clear as pure rainwater in an ancient well. But it took a special little pail, a strong rope, care, steadfastness, persistence and an awful, long, deep, hard drop before you might finally discover him.
Occasionally, others’ voices echoed down his walls, their cries reverberated, and sometimes pebbles or pennies disturbed the still calm of his surface, made him ripple, briefly. But true and natural light never reflected on his heart. Not a glimpse of it. Not even a glimmer.
He was dark inside, although not in a bad way. He was plain, brown and clean; like peat or coya bark, or fine, rich, fertilizer.
He was just a man, in other words, and nothing less.
They’d been joined by a fourth. The third had been a boy who –Jo couldn’t help thinking –had dramatically overstepped the mark by strolling into the small paved garden, ringing on the bell and then repeatedly hammering with his fist at the window. She’d been alarmed by this behaviour. She’d presumed some invisible rule-book. She’d anticipated complex codes of practice, margins, restrictions, limitations. She’d expected restraint.
Doc also watched the boy closely –a submissive Dennis sitting morosely at his heels –but said and did nothing. When a fourth man arrived though (in his fifties and looking –Jo couldn’t curb the crassness of her assessment –an absolute bloody Trainspotter with his long, grey face, thick glasses, waterproof beanie bearing a preposterous logo –a little fat koala-like creature with the word Gumble written underneath it –plastic rucksack and binoculars), she finally heard Doc mention the boy’s impropriety, and in tones of fairly severe disapproval. They called the boy Patty.
‘Will you say anything, Doc?’ the fourth man asked, gazing over towards Patty bemusedly. ‘He’s absolutely trashing that hydrangea.’
Doc shrugged, ‘Not my responsibility, Hooch. I’m hardly the boy’s keeper.’
The two of them dumbly ruminated upon Patty’s continuing antics for a while, before, ‘Ay ay!’ the fourth man whispered, clumsily adjusting his glasses on the flat, elongated (almost turtlelike) bridge of his snout and squinting furtively across Doc’s right shoulder blade. ‘It looks like somebody else might be squaring up to take the initiative.’
As he spoke he yanked off his rucksack and shoved his hand deep inside of it. He withdrew a pad and a pen.
The enterprising person to whom Hooch referred had silently emerged from the small, rather scruffy-looking mint-green bungalow behind them. He was a man; stem-seeming, handsome, sallow-skinned. A big, brazen creature. Wide-jawed. Gargantuan. A moose.
As they watched, he emerged fully into the sharp morning light, squinting antagonistically into the high winter sky like some kind of hostile, nocturnal organism, turned and slammed his front door (it clicked shut, then immediately swung back open) clumped rapidly over his large, well-constructed American-style verandah, banged down some thick, wooden steps, marched across his wildly Amazonian front garden, out through his gate (again, although he closed it with a satisfying clatter, only seconds later it was yawning insolently behind him), strode along the pavement –passing literally within inches of the three of them –and dashed straight over the road, narrowly avoiding a scooter and a small, battered yellow Volkswagen (the Volkswagen swerving and sounding its horn) without so much as a word, a squeak, a grunt of acknowledgement.
As he moved, Jo noted, a spray of something chalk-like –a fine, dusty aura –seemed to follow in his wake. When she looked harder, she noticed that he wore ancient trousers and a threadbare jumper, both of which were saturated with a diffuse, pale, powdery substance. Flour? She frowned. No. Not white enough. Grit? Nope. Something infinitely lighter. She sniffed the air, cat-like, after his passing. Ah. That was it. Sawdust.
The man-moose, meanwhile, was entering the bungalow’s garden. He was marching across the brick parquet. He was grabbing Patty by the arm. He was towering above him.
Jo drew a deep, gulping breath –as if she’d just been shoved from a mile-high diving board –then gazed down at her shoes, slowly exhaling. Birkenstocks. Brown plastic leather-look. Square-toed. Lace-ups. Cruelty-free.
She found herself inspecting the heel of her left shoe (abstractly observing how the tread was far more worn on the right hand side), while simultaneously straining her two sharp ears for any vaguely audible scraps of conversation.
What could he possibly be saying?
Initially a couple more cars passed by, drowning out everything, and then –damn him, what timing – Doc started talking.
‘Well that’s certainly gone and done it,’ he murmured, turning to Hooch conspiratorially. ‘Happen to know whose house that is?’
Doc’s voice, Jo felt (perhaps even for her benefit), was slightly louder than it had been previously.
‘I don’t know,’ Hooch answered, staring wide-eyed at his mentor, opening his pad and priming his pen in sweet anticipation. ‘Should I, Doc?’
Jo silently noted the obsequious way in which Hooch repeatedly used the Old Man’s name in conversation.
‘Katherine. Katherine Turpin. Remember her?’
Doc pronounced this feminine appellation only seconds before the huge, dusty, moose-like man echoed the self-same three syllables himself during the course of his own conversation.
Jo glanced up from her shoes.
‘Katherine who?’ Hooch quizzed.
‘Katherine Turpin.’
‘Turpin?’
‘As in Dick,’ Doc said.
‘It rings a bell, Doc,’ Hooch muttered, glancing sideways at Jo for the first time, as if supremely protective of the information he was gleaning. He suddenly lowered his voice, presumably hoping to encourage Doc to do the same, ‘And the connection?’
‘The walks book,’ Doc announced, sounding justly proud of his coup, ‘the section on Canvey. All that crazy stuff about boundaries. I never understood a word of it…’ he chuckled, ‘nor did Wes himself, more than likely. But this is where she lives. That much I am sure of.’
Hooch chewed on the end of his finger for a moment, frowning, then suddenly his monolithic mien brightened. ‘Of course,’ he squeaked, jabbing his biro into the air with a quite savage delight, ‘of course of course. You mean Katherine. You mean the Katherine Turpin. What on earth was I thinking? You mean Katherine the whore…’
Hooch proclaimed this
slanderous defamation with all the uninhibited joy of a miserly man who unexpectedly finds his long-lost gold cap tucked inside a three-week-old carton of pasta salad.
‘Sssh!’
Even Doc had the good grace to seem embarrassed by Hooch’s complete want of delicacy. Dewi and the kid were currently well within earshot, standing on the opposite kerb, impatiently waiting for a van to pass. He scowled, quickly pushing his pager into his coat pocket –as if to free his hands for something (combat, possibly) –but then held them limply by his sides, open, loose.
They crossed the road. Dewi roughly yanked Patty up onto the grass verge in front of them. ‘Is the boy with you?’ he asked Doc, proffering the child, who dangled as weakly in Dewi’s huge grip as a faded old bathrobe on a big, brass doorknob.
‘The boy? Mine? Good Lord, no,’ Doc exclaimed, lifting his hands and smiling as if this was possibly the most preposterous supposition he had ever yet been party to.
The boy, his?
Patty stared up at Doc, unblinking, his head yanked sideways by Dewi’s tight grip. He was just a boy. He had no agenda. There was nothing unspoken or sly or resentful in his gaze. But even so, almost out of nowhere, Doc’s smile suddenly faltered. His hands froze, mid-air. His lips twisted. Because he had indeed been the father of a son, once.
A father. This strangely alien yet acutely painful notion hit him like a karate kick. Two kicks. In the kidneys. It winded him. How on earth could he have forgotten? Even passingly. His own flesh and blood, his boy, dead. A too short life, curtailed, emptied, drained, exhausted…
Doc’s loose hands clenched, just briefly, as if he was seriously considering doing something wild and magnificent –venting his rage. Perhaps calling death or fate or destiny to task. Going five rounds with the bastards. Pulping them –but then they unclenched again and hung inertly.
Dewi didn’t notice Doc’s distress. It was all much too subtle. He was far too irritable. He turned to Jo. ‘What about you?’ he asked, then paused for a moment to inspect her face more closely. He had mistaken her for a boy, possibly a brother. But she was a girl, and as if to prove it categorically, a fierce blush –like two clumsily upended measures of sweet cherry brandy –slowly stained the impeccable cream cotton tablecloth of her soft complexion.
Behindlings Page 5
