This was surely the best kind of walking. He’d done it several times now –the span of the whole damn island –it was his job to keep circling (claws held tight, tucked in, like a vulture, a hawk, a raven; riding the ill-tuned, honk and parp of those choppy church-organ thermals –up, up, up, up…
down
– looking for weakness, stretching his wings, being irrepressibly keen, endlessly curious, revoltingly beady).
There was still plenty here to preoccupy him. Familiarity breeding (not contempt. No. He was never contemptuous. Contempt was just another kind of weakness) more familiarity.
There was the dump –which he loved –the Stonehenge of slag and scrap, the Babylon of debris. The smell, even in winter, was really quite heady. Rich and sweet with both form and integrity. In fact if stink were audible (Wesley conceptualised, idly) then it would be a lactating vixen, its foot caught and tearing in a steel-sprung trap. It would be a howl, but keening. A scream, only rounder.
He’d taken too long, but he’d indulged himself a little. Couldn’t help it. Pretended he was hiking in the American Delta (he’d never been to America, but he felt its expanses locked up inside of him –wrapped-up tight with string and paper, bruised by a plethora of airmail stickers –in a thousand different illusory sense-memories.
He’d smelled it. He’d read it. He’d felt the parch and the gust of it. He’d eaten key-lime pie, drunk bourbon and communed with the bison. He’d headed Westward, crossing frontiers, smashing stuff up willy-nilly, scything, apportioning, opening, appropriating, but in his belly, in his crop; internally, mentally, bacterially).
When the sea wall finally toughened up and became concrete, he’d sprung up onto it, like an acrobat alighting –following a sprint, a bounce, a minutely-timed flick-flack –on the back of a cantering pony. He liked to indulge his childish whims. He liked to reel and totter on walls, precariously.
One step, two steps, taking it slow, taking it easy, finding his buzzing brain briefly –and blissfully –sedated by the careful regularity of one foot then the other, one foot then… He paused for a second, looked up, just quickly, to locate his wider bearings, and then –
WOW!
– he started (wobbled) and clutched at the air with his hands… Because suddenly he was wantonly jolted, he was upper-cut, he was hijacked by a huge, brash, bulbous shimmering edifice. Lights starting to blink and twinkle as the sun finally ducked and staggered –pissed and bloodshot –behind the sea.
The Oil Refinery. Ahhh. Wesley stood straight on the wall, shoulders dragged back by his rucksack, appraising it thoughtfully. He was bewitched by its humming and its clatter –all that convoluted metal glittering back at him, so… so imperturbably. All that industry.
His glance lowered. He admired the muted swathe of seabirds on the remaining patches of mudflat, paddling, contentedly –winter-throated and dozy –between him and this… this kinky, tortile, flexular… this… this big, sexy silver thing. This swirling, Byzantine monstrosity. This beauty.
Hmmn. Wesley bent his knees. Then stretched. The joints ached. He was tiring.
But he continued to stare, wondering. I mean would there be anything in it? For him? Could there be? He clenched his hands into balls and remained in place a little longer (just like he had yesterday, and the day before the day before). These industrial people needed to see him. They had to be cognisant. They had to be heedful. They had to be prudent and careful and wary. Or at least –as a matter of pride, a matter of principle, really –they had to think that they had to be.
He walked on. The sea wall was thinner now, several feet off the ground on one side, the other a deep drop into the wide tidal outlet between him and the monster. But soon the monster diminished, its headland wore to nothing, it shrank into a grumbling, monochrome muffle behind him. Now there was just sea. Everything had grown flat and quiet again. Wesley watched his feet.
The foxes liked this wall well enough. They shat on it. It was their boundary. Old, purple faeces, crammed with blackberry and elder and bits of insects. He bounded over these purple markers, conscientiously. He kept his eyes peeled.
Shivering rabbits sat up and appraised him, dwarfed by the harsh, sharp, linear shading of oil-black bridges. Disused. Rusting. Ancient, iron-elbowed rollercoasters, (industrial lemon rind, arcing and looping from nowhere to the sea), black towers, piers, angry dead promontories.
He smiled at them all, gently.
This was the shattered, hacked-up back-bone of a once hard-worked industrial legacy. This was the ancient trash of modernity. These were the scribbles in the margin. This was the graffiti.
But my God – Wesley stopped smiling –all that effort, all that toil and stink and shit and drudgery. And why? And for what? For this? Only the proud, mouldering bones remaining for the wildflowers to strangle, for the thistle to scratch, for the rain to tap upon in hollow melody?
Wesley stared at his feet, with increased attention, but then glanced up again, furtively, and saw a fantastic spidery mast –a spire –just standing right there, in the middle of nowhere –practically whited-out with council warnings –an impossible temptation for any adventurer.
It was getting dark, though, and the concrete of the wall was getting higher and fuzzier against the deepening blue around him. The water was blackening. The gulls were setting off intently, in ranks, towards the freezing pale and darkening grey.
By the time he’d reached the place he needed to be, the sea, the wall and everything remaining were submerged inside a warning blue-black grimace of octopus ink. No stars. The moon low, behind cloud, calling gently to the tide in chilly whispers.
Would she still be there?
Wesley suddenly considered the librarian. Eileen. It was unlikely. It was too cold for one thing. And the fishing pier was closed off by a gate (white-painted, gleaming crudely like false teeth under ultra-violet) with a sign prohibiting entry. How would she have clambered over in those delicate little shoes she’d been wearing earlier? He remembered the shoes, clearly. What had he been thinking, setting up this stupid meeting? And why here?
Wesley pulled his rucksack from his shoulders and threw it over the gate. The gate creaked when he leaned against it. He whistled. Nothing. He pushed at it, tentatively –
Yes.
It opened. There were bushes to the near end –a mass of brambles desperately scrabbling to drag this straying edifice back into the close, warm palm of dry land again. He moved past them. He walked tentatively, the pier creaking. And then…
He saw her.
She was frozen, halfway along, standing in a sudden pool of toothy yellow (the moon’s grin flickering, uncertainly, like a burned-down candle in a gusty stairwell). She was half-turned towards him, her arm outstretched, her fingers beckoning. She was struck dumb. He could see her lips moving.
She pointed.
He looked.
Heron. Right there, on the drop of the pier. Five foot away. Or six. Statuesque in the darkness –the night fog picking him out in a muted tapestry of black and grey. Gaunt but wilting.
Wesley drew closer. The bird shifted but it did not fly. He felt Eileen’s hand reaching out for his. Her fingers so cold she must have been waiting just about forever. Her breath in mist. Her hair like candyfloss. She touched his hand –the cold nose of a kitten –then set it free again.
He was two hours late, and she had waited.
‘We’ve been here,’ she whispered, ‘a long, long while, just listening to the night falling and the moon rising and the sea lapping. It’s been…’ she struggled, ‘it’s been…’
‘It’s late,’ Wesley whispered back to her, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s been…’ she continued, not even countenancing his apology, ‘it’s been heavenly.’ She paused and drew breath, ‘When I first arrived and it was still light, he tried to fly, but he couldn’t make it. Too weak. He’s an old one. I think this might be… I mean, I think he might be…’
She didn’t dare say it.
&nbs
p; They were quiet. The bird shifted. Bone creaking audibly against quill; his last will and testament etching itself, with gradual inevitability, into nature’s cruel registry.
‘Will we save him?’ Wesley asked the sky.
Eileen turned to appraise him fully, ‘Could we?’
Her eyes were bright with childish expectation; prised wide by dolls’ houses and tin drums and teddies. Trussed up with gilt-edged ribbons. Wesley was suddenly all her Christmases. He was her beardless Santa, bringing flesh and bone and lust and hope, all jumbled up together and slung into the duck-down-trimmed sack thrown over his shoulder.
He smiled. She was so silly. In that moment he thought that he had never seen anyone so full of honest expectation, so sincere, so clean.
He took her hand and raised it to his face (that hand. Cold as a side of refrigerated pork, and softer still. It smelled of apricots). He touched it gently to his cheek.
How he wished he could live in this enchanted place –this hopeful world she inhabited so effortlessly –but it was a strange land –they spoke a different language, had different customs –and its borders were patrolled too closely. It was inaccessible to him; it was cooped and cloistered, trapped deep inside of her. It pumped in her blood: a sweet, scented garden, blooming and shining inside the seven smooth layers of her brilliant skin.
‘But first we must catch him,’ Wesley spoke, ‘and he’s bound to resist us. Are you game, Eileen?’
(Used her name. Used it easily.)
‘Are you ready?’
Eileen drew a deep breath and then carefully adjusted the small velvet collar on her coat. She stood straight and determinedly in her kinky heels. She was primed, at a word, to do his bidding.
Wesley slowly unbuttoned his corduroy jacket, ‘You must move to the left of him, hold his attention. I’ll come from the rear. Perhaps you should be singing something, but only very softly…’
‘But what should I sing?’ she interrupted him, keenly.
Wesley paused. He grinned to himself.
‘Something by…’ he stared at her in the darkness. He could smell the roses on her. Their bruised petals tickled his sinuses. ‘Something by The Carpenters. But hum it.’
Eileen was quiet for a second. It was a beautiful hiatus. Then she drew breath and softly began humming. After three seconds, though, she stopped.
‘We’ve Only Just Begun… ’ she whispered, ‘do you think he’ll like it?’
‘It’s…’ Wesley felt the sudden urge to pinch and kiss the translucent flesh on the inside of her elbow. He imagined the mauve intensity of those turquoise and lilac veins and his cruel fingers plucking at them, ‘… it’s perfect,’ he told her.
Eileen began humming again. Her voice was low, but the song was lower, the bottom notes collapsing like a confident ballerina into the powerful arms of her partner.
Wesley stood and listened. He closed his eyes for a second. Oh, he told himself, this is one of those moments… He tingled. He shuddered. Then he opened his eyes, removed his jacket, took something else –was it the knife? The hunting knife? –from his trouser pocket, hid it behind him with one hand, while holding the coat up –high and close in front of him –with the other.
Eighteen
Rabbit-duck?
Duck-rabbit!
Ludwig? Ludwag!
Catch me out, honey,
And I’ll catch you at it
He hadn’t made it easy for her. But why the hell should he? He was just a boy. She was just a girl. It was biologically determined that things would be complicated.
She’d bought him a cold drink (wouldn’t he prefer something warmer? A cocoa or a Horlicks? Did they even do Horlicks here? No.
No, he wanted a cold drink. He didn’t like his drinks warmed. He liked them bubbly. He liked them icy. He liked them cheap and sharp and sweet).
Jo ordered herself a milky tea –she was absolutely ruddy freezing – cupped her hands around it, held her chin over the steam, felt her nose running, and sniffed, under her breath, repeatedly.
At least he’d let her buy him something to eat (a sacrifice of some considerable magnitude on his part, apparently). His needs were very particular –she noted –as he guardedly selected a serving of coleslaw in its own polystyrene tub, a packet of fries –French, puckered, browning –and a seeded burger bun, with gherkins and extra onions (cubed, minutely, in the characteristic Wimpy way), but without the meat (without the patty. Now that was… that was funny), followed, climactically, by a large and sticky Brown Derby (ice cream in winter? Was the boy deranged?) with all the nutty and saucy trimmings.
Patty –it soon transpired –had absolutely no table manners to speak of (or not to speak of, as the case may be, except with his mouth full, his eyes rolling and his two sharp elbows tent-pegging the table). Yet this lack wasn’t just a casual deficit; he seemed cheerfully and positively opposed to all forms of etiquette. He reminded Jo of a feral canine. A scavenger. One of those lean mutts who patrolled the dusty suburban streets in Tenerife or Tunisia. In packs. One of those mean beasts. Tick-infested –too thin –hungry –snarly –hungry.
Then to top it all off –and adding insult to injury –instead of calmly unburdening while he was grabbing and prodding, fingering and scoffing (he did promise to unburden, didn’t he?), the boy proceeded to try his level best to interrogate Jo instead. He needed to get his head around her. He needed to fit her, somewhere –to parcel her up, to slot her in, to neaten her. It was, she presumed, a ten-year-old boy thing.
‘You grew up in this shithole, then?’
His first question. He had a droplet of salad cream in the gap between his mouth and his nose. Jo stared at it, resignedly.
‘What’s your problem with Canvey?’ she countered. She was a local girl. She had local pride.
‘Wesley has written,’ the boy told her, straightening his backbone as he quoted the master, ‘that the Estuary Islands –and Canvey in particular –remind him, geographically, of the American Delta.’
Jo was unimpressed, ‘Lots of people say that. I think it’s basically just…’ she considered her choice of words carefully, ‘just crap, really.’
‘Why?’
The boy opened his bun and arranged some french fries on it. He laid them straight –in a carbo-raft –then painstakingly tipped the coleslaw over.
‘Has Wesley ever been to America?’
The boy shrugged, ‘Dunno. But his dad did. His dad was a marine in the British Navy.’
‘Really?’
I believe so,’ the boy nodded his small head, gravely.
Jo smiled. Against her better judgement, she found herself warming to this prickly creature. This tyke. This urchin.
‘I didn’t know that,’ she told him, ‘but it certainly explains a lot.’
The boy stared at Josephine across the table, his Cola suspended halfway between its soggy red paper coaster and his lips. He was deeply unimpressed by her cheery veneer. He detected more than a whiff of grown-up condescension in it. He was a wise child. And sensitive.
‘You don’t know squat, then,’ he barked out, ‘do ya?’
He took a swig of his drink, wincing, grotesquely, as it hit his fillings. Jo rapidly revised her good opinion.
‘Anyway,’ he persisted, ‘you can’t’ve liked it that much around here if you were in such a bloody hurry to leave.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her voice was sterner than it might’ve been (why on earth had she gone and mentioned the Canvey connection? It was obviously going to plague her), ‘Southend’s just a spit up the road. It’s visible from the headland. It’s no distance at all.’
The boy raised his brows at her.
‘Sensitive,’ he said, taking an ice cube from his drink, and biting down hard upon it, ‘aren’t we?’
‘No,’ Jo paused for a moment. ‘No. Not sensitive. Just…’ God. His crunching on that ice was making her spine quiver, ‘just… just a stickler.’
(Oh she was sensitive alright. The wound
s were still there. Still raw. Even after all this time. This boy was much cleverer than he looked. This boy was… Was he a danger?)
‘Let’s talk about Clue Five,’ Patty said, getting down to business, wiping his hands and lips on a napkin (now that was a concession, wasn’t it? To the stilted and gibbering God of Etiquette?) before removing a sheath of papers from the inside pocket of his bomber jacket.
The salad cream beneath his nose had survived the napkin’s absorbent swipe undiminished. Jo took a sip of tea, still staring at it, blankly… Now what was he up to? Was this malevolent little shit avoiding something?
Or was she?
The boy found the clue he required among his small stack of papers which were all tied up –and very neatly, at that –with a blue rubber band, then divided into sections by multi-coloured clips. One paper, she couldn’t help noticing, was a photocopied photograph –colour printed –of a woman and a baby. From the late 1970s.
Jo reached out her hand and spun it around, ‘Who’s that?’
‘None of your bloody business.’ He snatched the picture back.
‘Sorry.’
Jo withdrew, offended.
‘My mother and my big sister,’ he suddenly blurted. ‘Really?’ She inspected his face, sympathetically, ‘I bet they worry.’
‘Why should they?’ the boy snapped.
Jo dumbly shrugged her injured acquiescence.
‘I don’t live with them, anyway,’ he told her, ‘I have a foster family in Derby.’
‘I see.’ Jo nodded, staring at his mean lips, thoughtfully. This boy caves, she ruminated, if you withdraw after questioning –if you simply back down –if you ignore his parry.
‘Why Clue Five then, Patty?’
(Had to use the name. Had to test her theory.)
‘No bloody reason,’ the boy growled.
‘Fine,’ she conceded.
‘Just because…’ the boy spat out –he couldn’t help himself -‘just because I know a lot about it, but no one ever explains it to me. The stuff I know. They think it’s all a big joke when…’ he thought hard, ‘when I don’t,’ he scowled, ‘… they think I don’t comprehend nothing properly. Too raw, Hooch says.’
Behindlings Page 17
