Behindlings

by Nicola Barker

  Arthur didn’t seem to be listening. He just shrugged, ‘I figured she must be…’

  Tap tap tap

  ‘… connected in some way. Because of the Welsh lad. Because of the extremity of his reaction.’

  ‘Yes it was…’ Ted nodded, ‘… it was extreme, certainly.’

  Arthur peered up, ‘A Behindling, then, d’you reckon?’

  ‘I… uh…’ Ted scratched his head, ‘I’m afraid I don’t really know what that means.’

  Arthur opened his mouth as if to tell him, but Ted interrupted, ‘And I think I’m happier not knowing,’ he gently resisted, ‘I mean if you don’t know the rules you can’t be… it’s less…’

  Arthur shrugged. He seemed to be evaluating something –

  This level of naivety

  Suspicious

  And he was very well placed…

  ‘We went to school together,’ Ted continued, misconstruing Arthur’s silence as hostility, wanting to mollify him, ‘and she has brothers in Canvey. Three brothers. One runs a minicab business. One manages the sports centre. The other owns a salvage company on the Charfleet Estate, along with her father.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But she had very long hair before.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I didn’t… She had very long hair. Blonde. Wesley actually spoke to her, earlier this afternoon. She said she was over from Southend for the day. But I’m certain it was her, and that she was from Canvey, originally.’

  Ted noticed –with some irritation –how Arthur sprang to attention at the mention of Wesley’s name. As if everything gained its significance through its connection to him.

  ‘Well placed, too, then, eh?’ Arthur murmured.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said she’s well placed. Like you are.’

  Arthur gave Ted a significant look. But Ted seemed mystified by it, if not a little disturbed. Perhaps the strange light wasn’t helping.

  Ted shifted his weight.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Arthur turned back to the computer, smiling –

  That kind of innocence

  You couldn’t fuck with it

  He dwelled briefly on the broken bottle and the blood. There was something… there was something not quite… that level of…

  Outrageous

  Bean. Bean. Needed to remember…

  Then he gradually began tapping again; curtailing, re-configuring, tidying things up.

  Ted padded slowly to the front door (couldn’t risk the picture window –too open –too bare). He peeked through it and over towards the Leisure Centre where the last few stragglers for the night’s second Bingo session were doggedly accumulating. Still raining. That deep, that steady, that ineffable Winter-deep Canvey drear.

  Then he blinked. He drew a sharp breath. He pulled back. He double-checked. He pulled back even further.

  ‘Duck,’ he whispered urgently.

  Arthur ducked, immediately –under the table –bones creaking.

  Ted’s mouth had fallen open, his eyes were improbably wide.

  Could’ve sworn he just saw… Could’ve sworn he just…

  Eileen.

  But she wasn’t… she seemed… she wasn’t looking over. She was staring down, fixedly. Scuttling along. Scarf pulled around her head, over her cheek, as if… yanked across… like in… a kind of… a mad… a desperate…

  Purdah

  She always played Bingo with her mother on a Friday, but tonight she was walking in the opposite direction. Head down. Straight past. Scurrying… uh…

  Home –would that be?

  ‘Can I…?’ Arthur’s face was ruddy with the exertion of his position.

  Ted’s head jerked around.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Boss’s wife. She usually plays Bingo on a Friday.’

  Didn’t need to mention…

  How distressed…

  Shouldn’t…

  Or Wesley…

  Arthur straightened up again, grimacing.

  ‘Quick response, though,’ Ted added –

  Must be military

  Or very…

  Arthur shrugged. He whizzed the mouse around, clicked it a few times, waited, then flipped off the power.

  ‘That’s about it,’ he said, stretching and yawning.

  As the screen went black, so too did his corner.

  ‘We’re back to all the basics,’ he continued, matter-of-factly, through the darkness (Ted was still visible by the door), ‘I’ve not been able to save everything, but you’ve been pretty fortunate, all in all.’

  Ted chuckled to himself, weakly, touching his head, his hair, not a little derangedly. ‘Must be my lucky day,’ he said.

  Outside, meanwhile, a small van was pulling up, flanked –on both sides –by the distinctive metal struts denoting the largescale transportation of breakable material.

  Arthur’s ironic eyes trailed the van, its driver (improbably well-attired –for Service –in a smart shirt and tie and blazer).

  ‘I think it must be,’ he replied.

  Thirty

  ‘You’ve checked the points, presumably…’

  A voice spoke – a male voice – from directly behind her, ‘they’re always the first thing to go with a Mini. In damp weather, especially.’

  Josephine carefully withdrew her head from under the small bonnet of her car. ‘Several times already,’ she said, turning and instinctively bringing the screwdriver she was holding (her hands so cold she could barely cling onto it) to the front of her belly.

  But it was Wesley.

  She stared up at him, astonished.

  He peered past her, into the engine, his face (even in the steady murk of semi-darkness) enlivened by a clutch of painful-looking reddish blotches. ‘I’m mechanically-minded,’ he said, squinting myopically, ‘but I eschew the car ideologically.’

  She shifted left, to allow him full access, while surreptitiously stealing her injured arm behind her back (something she instantly regretted – it created a furtive impression, as if she was now intent upon hiding the screwdriver from him, for some inexplicable reason).

  Wesley didn’t miss a thing. He leaned sideways to try and spot what she was concealing. She shifted her feet (heavy as a shire horse’s hooves after a full day’s ploughing) and sheepishly brought the tool back around again, her cheeks reddening. She seemed painfully aware of his sudden proximity.

  He pulled out the points and blew on them, drying them on the lining of his jacket.

  ‘I t-t-tried the points,’ she repeated, shivering (so cold her lips were almost frozen; her words might shatter if he breathed any warmth on them).

  Wesley pushed the points firmly back into place again. ‘Antifreeze?’

  She nodded, ‘Last thing yesterday. F-first thing this morning.’

  ‘Checked the oil?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Petrol? Water? Battery?’

  She nodded again.

  He stepped back, wiping the grease from his fingers onto his trousers.

  That injured hand

  A baby bird

  Opening and closing like a hungry fledgling

  ‘Then you should probably get a cab back to Southend. You’ll kill yourself if you stay out here much longer.’

  ‘I’d get a c-cab if I was anywhere else,’ she said, her teeth clashing pitiably, ‘but I can’t here. N-not in C-Canvey.’

  Canvey

  Pronounced the name like it was something heinous – polluted – despicable.

  Wesley mused this over – staring at her intently – clearly impressed by her particular brand of evasive straightforwardness. Then he smiled. He shrugged. He turned away –

  So let her die

  ‘It was m-me who sent you that letter,’ she chattered after him, wrapping her arms around her shoulders to try and cushion her juddering chin, ‘about my… about…’

  ‘I have no address,’ Wesley cut her off, contemptuously, ‘I receive no…’

>   ‘When you were staying down in Devon. With the p-p-potter. The cr-crazy potter. Last year. Early. After the book first came out. It was about Katherine, about the gr-graffiti…’

  Wesley walked on a few paces.

  He never talked to the Followers. There were perfectly good reasons for it. He had to keep things separate. It was a kind of self-preservation.

  ‘But I wasn’t F-Following then,’ she said (as if reading his thoughts). ‘And it isn’t…’ She dropped the screwdriver and bent down to pick it up again, ‘it isn’t f-fair…’

  ‘What isn’t?’ Wesley paused for a second, half-smiling, but keeping his back turned deliberately towards her, ‘What isn’t f-fair?’ He bleated out the word in a cruel impersonation.

  (The concept of fairness seemed so laughable to him, so thin, so weedy, so conceptually pointless. Fair? What kind of rankly amateur, blithering shallow-wit was this woman, anyway?)

  Josephine felt her nose running. Was unable to stop it. Tasted the salt of snot on her upper lip. ‘It’s impossible to approach you without… without F-Following. I st-started unintentionally. I was… I got… It’s not what I…’

  ‘I didn’t get any letter,’ he repeated, ominously, ‘and the potter, for your information, isn’t remotely crazy.’

  He was facing into the wind. He’d been released from custody less than ten minutes earlier. He’d had no intention of happening across her. Of getting… getting…

  Button-holed

  He hated that kind of… of…

  Responsibility

  It was well past eleven (although time meant nothing to him; time was merely the interval between sleeping and waking, eating and shitting). He briefly half-remembered his promises for dinner. He half-remembered Katherine – the stink of drink – the milky neck – the lazy temptation.

  They were standing on a quiet, flat, unremarkable street only five minutes walk from the town centre and the Furtherwick (the Police Station two roads off to their left).

  It was foggy, threatening to snow. He felt his own face slowly freezing. His cheek – his chin – his bruises were aching.

  ‘I only n-need…’ she said – trying to walk forward a step but her legs kept on seizing, ‘just to explain, b-before…’

  ‘You’ll freeze to death out here,’ he warned her, not sounding particularly concerned by this prospect (more bored by it), but even so…

  He weakened for a moment and peered over his shoulder. She was a pathetic sight. Slight as a feather. Shaking like a puppy in a sudden bout of thunder. She was licked and whipped. She was stopped. She was fucked.

  ‘You were wet,’ he said, suddenly remembering (in a blurry haze, a fug), ‘earlier, in the bar…’ He squinted at her, ‘and you’re still wet. You’ll catch hypothermia. Stop being a fool. You can’t possibly stay out here.’

  ‘I ha-have to stay,’ she said, ‘I ?-need to… I’m in a…’

  He growled under his breath and strode impatiently towards her. ‘Show me the arm.’

  Her arm was hidden again. She didn’t want to show it. She was humiliated now, by everything. And if he was kind – admittedly, it seemed a remote possibility – but if he was, she would surely start crying. And he would really hate her, then. And deservedly.

  He reached out his bad hand – the sheer, shiny pincer of palm and thumb – grabbed a hold of her elbow, yanked it forward and roughly shoved back the sleeve of her jumper. She winced.

  ‘I thought you were working for the company,’ he said, staring at the cuts as if he couldn’t quite believe in them – four in all, each two inches long, bottle shaped – curving into smiles – a couple thick with dried blood and new scab, the third and fourth still oozing, ‘and even if you aren’t,’ he released her arm dispassionately, ‘you’re only complicating matters unnecessarily.’

  ‘I’m not wo-working for anybody,’ she chattered.

  ‘Except yourself,’ he sneered.

  He was just as cruel as she’d anticipated. Hateful. It was what she’d wanted. She needed punishing. Pain was her motivator.

  ‘Get back in the car and start up the engine,’ he ordered.

  Jo shuffled around the Mini, pulling her sleeve down, miserably. She opened the door, climbed stiffly inside, pressed down the pedals, turned the key in the ignition.

  The car squealed, unresponsively.

  She tried again.

  A third time.

  Wesley slammed down the bonnet. He circled the car, twice (like a predator negotiating a rival’s territory), then he yanked the door open on the passenger side and clambered in.

  ‘Any talking about specifics,’ he warned her, sticking his seat into recline (but sitting bolt upright in it) ‘about the Loiter, the letter, the Turpin girl, and I’m straight out of here.’

  He slammed his door shut, pulled off his waterproof, his jacket and his sweater.

  ‘Fuck the battery,’ he said, pushing back her hood, yanking off her wet scarf and tossing it onto the back seat, ‘put on the bloody heater.’

  ‘Just keep ringing,’ Ted said, backing off slowly down the neat, brick pathway and colliding with a conifer (clipping it with his shoulder and starting – not a little comically, Arthur felt – like he’d been cornered, unexpectedly, by an irritable green ogre) then continuing to ease himself – still backwards, still slowly – across the parquet-style driveway (like he was a big saloon car, or an improbably large Pleasure Cruiser on an impossibly small river) carefully maintaining eye-contact – for the best part – so Arthur wouldn’t get all jittery (perhaps) or lose his nerve and follow him – like a lost kitten – all the way back to the agency again, ‘she might’ve fallen asleep or something, but she’s bound to answer eventually…’

  He paused, on the roadway, ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer, it’s just…’ He pointed, dumbly –

  Glazier

  ‘Simply tell her who you are and that you’ve arranged to meet up with Wesley here. She’ll be fine about it, honestly. Contrary to what people like to say about her, Katherine can often be very…’ he bit his lip, ‘very accommodating,’ he murmured faintly (as if suddenly –or not so suddenly –having serious doubts about the overall situation, his unenviable part in it, the actual implications of what he was saying), then smiling (a little weakly), turning, waving, and promptly scarpering.

  Arthur frowned. Accommodating? Contrary to her reputation? He pulled the rucksack off his shoulder, tipped back his hat, pushed his finger towards the bell, made contact and sat on it.

  Ted had him all wrong. He felt no anxiety about meeting Miss Turpin. He had a very distinct idea of how she would be: sallow-skinned, auburn haired, thick-set, defeated. Like a young Pat Phoenix but without the fight. Like a rough-cut Liz Taylor circa Virginia Woolf, fluffy-slippered, sullen, puffy, mined, fag-ended.

  He had no particular concerns about the thought of encountering her. He believed himself an expert in the laws of human behaviour.

  He was tough as hide. He could handle anything.

  Katherine finally answered during Arthur’s third resounding climax of Sinatra’s My Way (no frills or flourishes in his particular rendition –marginally slower, perhaps, than the more famous original; on the good side of monotonous, the cusp of funereal).

  Arthur’s jaw went slack as she opened the door –

  Good God

  Who would’ve…?

  That husky-mouthed, milky-faced, heavy-smoking, fold-up-biking…

  That vicious…

  She barely glanced at him, though, as she ushered him –rather crabbily –within.

  ‘Hate that damn song,’ she muttered, clutching her ear –What was it with the ear?

  But it wasn’t so much the ear – it soon transpired –as her whole strange, pale head in all its fabulous entirety. She was savagely hung over.

  The hallway –Arthur put his hand to his nose, instinctively, his eyes prickling –was full of smoke.

  ‘I fell asleep,’ she croaked. ‘It feels like the bell’s been sound
ing off for hours.’

  ‘Is something burning?’ he asked, closing the door, putting down his rucksack (there were bags and bottles everywhere) glancing around him –slightly aghast at the mess –and then following her, carefully, down the corridor.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  She suddenly stopped and turned and stared up at him, ‘What brought you here, exactly?’ She scratched her head, vaguely, ‘I can’t for the life of me…’

  ‘Wesley,’ he promptly answered, ‘we’re meant to be meeting for dinner. He went off with the police about an hour ago…’ Arthur glanced at his watch, ‘in fact closer on two.’

  ‘Was it about the librarian?’ Katherine asked, frowning doubtfully, turning back around, still not focussing properly. ‘Or was it about his daughter?’

  ‘His…’ Arthur stopped in his tracks, ‘… pardon?’

  Katherine rubbed her right eye, yawned, started walking again.

  ‘The daughter,’ she repeated, over her shoulder, ‘like earlier… when the police…’

  She paused a second time, and shook her head (as if something had come loose inside her skull and the consequent rattle was truly provoking her) ‘… and talking of earlier, didn’t we meet before? I’m experiencing a disturbing déjà…’

  She walked on, coughing, without waiting for an answer.

  He followed her into the kitchen where the smoke was billowing (much to Katherine’s disinterest, and Arthur’s horror) in graceful plumes through the occasional crack in the oven’s perished rubber lining. The floor was covered in feathers and paper. No –stranger still –in feathers and origami.

  A heron’s wing was hung over the back of a chair by a piece of wire.

  Katherine pointed to this wing, rather querulously, ‘Dinner,’ she announced, placing her hand onto her belly, ‘in case you weren’t yet acquainted with the menu.’

  She went over to the sink, turned on the cold tap, ran it for a while, bent over and drank from it. When she eventually straightened up, the excess fluid dribbled onto her chin, her jaw, then down her neck. She made no effort to wipe it away.

  Arthur struggled not to focus on the droplets –their fascinating –

  Uh…

  – descent. Instead he went over and switched off the oven. He opened the back door. He waved his arms around a little.