Behindlings

by Nicola Barker

  ‘That’s my knife,’ he murmured childishly, ‘give it back.’

  She held it out to him, terrified, handle first. He snatched it from her, picked up the vixen, slung her around his shoulders, then pointed with the knife to the eggs, which were still on the floor where she’d left them. ‘There are two cubs,’ he said, ‘in a den under the flyover. This was their mother. A car killed her. The eggs are for them.’

  He began walking.

  ‘What about the deer?’ The girl turned from the bank. ‘What about Brion? He…’ Wesley blanked her out. Walked on.

  Once he reached the flyover he clambered up onto the road and headed along it. Away from Canvey. The first dwelling he came to, he knocked at the door and asked for some dry clothing. The oldest son in the house obliged him, gave him a mug of coffee, a piece of toast. He brought out a spade and they buried the vixen together, under an old cobnut tree at the far end of the garden; Cooper – a grey-muzzled brown labrador – officiated, accompanied by a tunelessly raucous starling choir.

  Fifty

  When the first police car roared past her, she pedalled faster and followed it, remembering the details Arthur Young had unwittingly let slip on the phone in the smoky bar the night before – he’d referred to some kind of… of craft – Hadn’t he?

  – and he’d mentioned the flyover.

  She overtook the agent’s Fiesta (not recognising it), kept going, felt the sweat freeze on her. A fire engine. Siren howling. Then an ambulance. She jumped off the bike at the back of a ludicrously long line of emergency service vehicles, sprinted to the base of the bridge, leaned over it, fingers spread, elbows rigid, gasping.

  A crocodile of people – mostly uniformed – were slowly advancing along the river path. On the river itself; a noisy, motorised, marine-rescue dinghy, two men in black rubber, a diver, a series of disparate objects floating on the choppy surface of the water.

  On the bank…

  Where was he?

  She saw Arthur Young –

  Oh thank…

  Thank…

  – wrapped up in a blanket, staring down at…

  A prone deer?

  With… with… with antlers?

  Could that…?

  She blinked. For a moment she almost believed that Wesley’d been transfigured. That it was him. That he was it. In form. In fact.

  She blinked again –

  No

  – her eyes jinked left.

  A child stood next to Arthur, holding onto his arm. A girl. Dark (was it his child? ). Dangling from the fingers of her other hand; a long, rather distinctive, fluffy orange… uh… scarf?

  No…

  A fox’s tail?

  Am I…?

  She blinked.

  Could that…?

  There was another person –

  Yes

  – a third, possibly a vet – down on his knees, trying to help the stag, clearing out its airwaves, blowing onto its nose, rubbing at it violently with a towel or a sack.

  The child – the girl – seemed in a state of some distress.

  Josephine’s eyebrows rose in sympathy, but only momentarily. Soon her focus shifted again –

  Where was he?

  Where?

  Towards the front of the line she saw the agent comforting the librarian. The librarian was blowing her nose while holding – and very nearly dropping, before the agent considerately intervened – a large box… an unwieldy box of…

  Of eggs?

  Jo jumped over the concrete partition, clambered down onto the bank and ran to join them. Eileen saw her first. ‘I threw…’ she spluttered, ‘and the whole thing just… it just…’ She made an expansive gesture with her hands.

  Josephine ignored the hands, the words, yelled straight into her face, without restraint, ‘JUST TELL ME HE ISN’T DEAD.’

  She was almost screaming – shocked herself, in fact (had no prior conception of how agitated she was feeling).

  ‘He isn’t,’ Eileen said (in a slightly resentful tone – as if a tragic fatality might’ve helped all those involved to feel marginally better).

  Josephine grabbed the agent’s arm and shook it (as though Wesley might fall out of his sleeve, his jacket, if only she persisted). ‘Where is he? Has he gone? Did he hurt anyone? Was he hurt? What happened?’

  She began coughing –

  Not enough breath

  ‘He’s fine,’ Ted gently removed her hand from his sleeve, squeezed it, released it. ‘He climbed up onto the main road, turned left. Ten minutes ago. Fifteen…’

  He pointed towards the little girl, ‘That’s his daughter. He wasn’t especially happy to see her. He took off.’

  Josephine nodded repeatedly at what he was saying, but she wasn’t focussing. She was staring wildly around her, looking for scraps, for clues. ‘Was there some kind of… of craft here before?’ On craft, Eileen’s face crumpled. She clutched the egg-box to her chest, lifted her lime green mud-encrusted pixie-boots and tottered unsteadily off.

  Josephine stood still for a second and struggled –

  Struggled

  – to remember the landscape of her past.

  The boat. The craft. Tried to recollect…

  ‘I had a feeling it was you,’ Ted murmured – in a soft conspiratorial tone – once Eileen was out of earshot.

  She stared at him, blankly.

  ‘I have re-lived that event in my mind…’ he continued, with a smile (almost of relief), ‘a thousand, a million times over.’

  He waited for some kind of reaction from her, but none came; she was studying the river again, closely scrutinising the three remaining struts of the walkway still poking out of the water.

  ‘I knocked, but just gently…’ he continued, hardly caring any more, simply telling himself now, as much as her, ‘because I didn’t really want him to answer…’

  He re-enacted that gentle knock; ‘I’d been involved in a scuffle during PE – totally out of character – but another boy – a boy called Bo – you might possibly remember…?’

  Nothing

  ‘Well he threw my uniform into the toilet; pissed on it…’ Ted shrugged, defensively, ‘I waited outside his office, but no answer, so I knocked again – louder – and still nothing, so I took a deep breath and I…’

  He re-enacted opening the door, walking in, his eyes widening in horror, ‘You were perched on his knee with your arms around his neck. I only saw you from the back – your hands, your hair – he was sitting in his chair, at his desk. I thought about… I almost… I tried to… I…’

  He shook his head, ‘I was just a kid. I was stupid. And Bo – of all people – was directly behind me – and when he saw my expression, he asked what was wrong and I just… I blabbed… and that was… that was it. It was… it was out.’

  He stared at Josephine, hoping – perhaps – for understanding. Sympathy. Fury, even.

  But nothing

  Her focus had shifted again, back onto the dark-haired child and the skinny, enigmatical Arthur Young.

  ‘Katherine found me,’ he continued, ‘a few days after. Took me aside and swore it was her. Said I’d misconstrued… made me believe her. Made me swear…’ he shook his head, dazed. ‘And you know what?’ he chuckled dryly at the extent of his own folly, ‘I wanted to believe her. I was weak. I wanted things to be clean and right and proper. So I made my apologies,’ he shrugged, regretfully, ‘and that was my mistake. Because I’d entered the lie. I became the lie. And for one reason or another – I don’t really know why – I never stopped apologising after that.’

  Ted looked down at his hands. His fingers and his nails were absolutely filthy, and there was a wide slick of mud – he observed irritably – across the middle of his tie. A few feet away, some encouraging progress was suddenly being made with the exhausted brown stag; Brion slowly lifted his head, coughed, kicked out a front leg…

  Sasha squealed and threw both of her arms around Arthur. He held onto her, stiffly (like an exhausted swim
mer embracing a buoy), smiling embarrassedly.

  Josephine smiled herself, in reaction, then turned back to face the agent again, her expression rapidly degenerating from cheery to stony. ‘That’s all ancient history now, Ted,’ she told him bluntly, ‘get over it. Move on.’

  ‘You need a drink,’ Katherine murmured, staring at him sympathetically – although sympathy wasn’t really her thing, was an unfamiliar visitor to her emotional vista (so she made its acquaintance tentatively, unconfidently, and it was a stretch – took moral effort – which was exhausting for her).

  She was tired –

  Tired

  He was still shivering, although he’d had a warm bath and was wearing her father’s old clothes – wearing them exceptionally well, as it transpired (every item but the shoes fitting perfectly).

  His arm had been bandaged by the mobile doctor. She idly recalled the Bean girl having a bandaged arm, earlier (the right arm). She presumed it was some kind of Wesley-based phenomena – that these were copy-cat injuries; imitative woundings of a sympathetic nature. She loved this idea. She was sick. It amused her.

  ‘I don’t really know why I’m…’ Arthur glanced around the kitchen. Everything seemed – if possible – even more sordid than when he’d been there the night before, ‘imposing on you like this…’

  He rubbed his hair. It was lank and soft thanks to the tiny splash of geranium oil she’d applied to his bathwater.

  ‘A warm berth,’ she gave him a salacious look. Didn’t quite pull it off, ‘bath,’ she adjusted, hiccuped.

  Blinked –

  Pine

  She filled the kettle. Arthur walked over to inspect her chinchilla.

  ‘Was the girl alright in the end, though,’ Katherine asked, ‘the daughter?’

  He nodded, ‘As well as can be expected. It was all slightly…’ he sniffed, ‘traumatic.’

  ‘Was she sweet?’

  ‘Very. Hard-nosed. Funny.’

  ‘Was she like him?’

  Arthur frowned, scratched his head again, slowly, ‘Yes. Yes. I suppose she was, really.’

  Katherine plugged the kettle in, turned it on. ‘And what’ll happen to her now?’

  ‘The mother’s been called back from her honeymoon in… in…’ he grimaced, ‘and is driving down to fetch her.’

  ‘Wow,’ Katherine sighed, as if delighted – by proxy – at the trouble Sasha had caused everyone.

  Arthur cautiously pushed his index finger through the bars of Bron’s cage. Bron froze and stared pointedly at the finger, his whiskers vibrating crazily.

  ‘Does the rodent have a name?’ he asked.

  ‘Bron.’

  ‘Really? What’s the background on that?’

  ‘The Tomorrow People. Bron is a magical creature who possesses the special gift of transforming himself into the one thing each person most loves.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Arthur stared at the rodent, unlovingly.

  He suddenly felt… was feeling…

  What was it?

  Empty?

  Bereft?

  Ever since…

  ‘And the deer?’ she asked.

  He turned and stared at her, intently. Surely she must be feeling it too? He hunted for the signs. Longed for them. Saw none.

  ‘Tough as old boots,’ he eventually murmured.

  Katherine nodded sagely, ‘That’s why Santa favours them over the motor scooter.’

  He didn’t react. He was inspecting her boiler suit. The poppers. The length of the arms. The traces of sick down the front.

  ‘So what will you do now?’ she asked, slightly disconcerted by the attention he was paying her (she didn’t remember asking for it, but attention – she supposed – was always rather like that).

  He shrugged, ‘Haven’t decided yet,’ then smiled. ‘I thought about you,’ he said thickly, ‘all night long, in the dark.’

  She scratched her chin, uneasily. She didn’t believe him for a second.

  ‘But I don’t know anything about you…’ he continued.

  ‘Apart from…’ she interrupted, widening her eyes, ‘the obvious, obviously.’ He nodded but looked vacant.

  ‘The fold-up bike,’ he suddenly said, as though snatching this abiding image straight from the ether.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the sex.’

  She picked up a couple of mugs from the work-surface, turned her back on him.

  ‘So you work locally?’ he asked.

  She rinsed the mugs in the sink, her mouth tightening at its corners. ‘I do.’

  She faced him again, her countenance scrubbed clean. ‘I sprout beans for a living.’

  ‘Really?’

  He struggled to concentrate. He was remembering…

  That gas canister

  That cold water

  ‘Yes. Mung, aduki, alfalfa…’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Lentils, chick peas…’

  The kettle boiled, clicked, sighed.

  It started to rain again outside.

  The chinchilla yawned.

  Her stomach rumbled –

  The sheer…

  The infernal…

  The unbelievable mundanity of it all…

  ‘I can spare you thirty quid,’ she said briskly, ‘and a coat, and a hat too, if you have need of it.’

  They crouched quietly under the flyover in the comforting semi-darkness, hoping – waiting – for those tragically orphaned cubs to make an appearance. He wrapped his arm around her. And when it grew too cold, she borrowed his jacket, inspected the seam-work, and even in the half-light, saw that it was perfect.

  ‘You’re fantastic, Ted,’ she said.

  And he nodded. Because he believed her. Because he knew it.

  He needed to walk it off –

  Just to walk

  – but his shoes weren’t right – a fraction too loose – so he stopped off at Saks to pick up a tissue or something –

  A napkin

  – to shove down the back. He took the money Katherine had given him out of her father’s old tweed coat pocket.

  This is a new lease of life, he thought, I am re-invented. There are things that I don’t need to understand or regret or explain any more.

  Because I am over it, I am…

  I am…

  But the words wouldn’t come.

  To fill up this temporary mental vacuum – this space – this confusion – he walked over to the counter –

  The sound of my own feet

  What a blessing

  – and when he arrived there, he ordered a vodka.

  Once the money’d run out, he produced his own wallet, opened it, pulled out Dewi’s wet notes, the damp picture of his kid, propped her up against an empty glass, toasted Dewi, toasted Sasha, toasted Katherine, toasted… toasted…

  God this took some doing

  – toasted Wesley –

  And that fucking gas canister

  – toasted himself, toasted her… until his arm couldn’t toast anyone

  – not anyone – anymore.

  ‘What did you forget now?’ she asked, in a tone which implied that he’d have forgotten his own hair if it hadn’t been well-rooted.

  ‘I forgot you,’ Dewi said grimly, ‘go and get the chinchilla and we’ll be off.’

  She shrugged, went through to the kitchen, brought the chinchilla cage back with her. He took it, held it primly aloft.

  ‘Good.’ His tone was crisp.

  ‘I suppose I’ll need a change of underwear,’ she ruminated. Her voice was uncertain – as if only half of her was involved in the current transaction; the less contentious part (the troubled side was off on sabbatical; perhaps swearing at a kindly nun, or giving hand relief to a total stranger with not-quite-clean-enough teeth in a not-quite-deserted-enough railway compartment somewhere).

  ‘No.’

  He opened the front door, drew a deep breath, and gravely made his peace with this other, rather more rambunctio
us, rather less appealing, absent part; ‘Katherine Turpin I like… I accept… I love your stink,’ he told her.

  She caught up with him on the hard shoulder. The boy – the oldest son from the house – was still walking alongside him, accompanied by his grizzled but genial stiff-limbed brown labrador.

  The boy’s name was Peter. He was fifteen. He wanted to be an astronaut (way off, though; way off in the future). He was exceptionally athletic; currently Canvey Athletics Team’s 100 metre champion (and a mean hurdler, a good walker – a keen hiker, he told Wesley) but scientific, too; had attained the top grades in his year for physics, maths, biology, chemistry…

  He was deadly serious about everything, himself especially.

  ‘To pursue my dream,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to get some kind of scholarship to America. The British Space Programme’s just a joke, but it’s an entirely different kettle of fish over there…’

  ‘Space is relative,’ Wesley teased him, his eyes scanning the path as he walked along, ‘and all creatures are travellers. The most important journeys are the interior ones. The most important and the most hazardous.’

  Josephine snorted at this, under her breath –

  God

  He was so full of…

  The bike’s front wheel suddenly hit the kerb and the whole structure folded – in the middle – where the join was. It was definitely a design fault. It just needed some kind of… of clip, maybe, for when the bike wasn’t being ridden but was still in…

  In motion

  Wesley heard this slight commotion and glanced over his shoulder. His face snapped shut when he saw her. His mouth tightened. Then he turned back around and simply walked faster.

  ‘I know about Gumble, Wesley,’ she said tiredly – not shouting over the traffic, but speaking quietly, within her normal range. He continued walking, though, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘I know about Goodwin, Wesley,’ she said, slightly louder.

  This time it was the boy’s turn to swing around and stare. It was a haughty look –

  Keen

  Jealous

  Josephine dropped the bike with a clatter. ‘Doc’s been in an accident,’ she observed stridently, then paused, speculatively, ‘although whether it’s entirely accurate to actually call it that…’

  She had his attention. Wesley stopped, turned to the boy. ‘I need to talk to this person,’ he explained, ‘but we can still meet up in Tilbury. Around six. Outside the pub. Like we discussed.’