Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  ‘You come to see that black geezer in apartment six?’ she asked.

  ‘Why?’ the woman rejoined staunchly. ‘Do people always visit residents the same colour as they are?’

  Kelly pursed her lips. The woman removed the strap of a heavy-looking, leather satchel (the kind Kelly associated with teachers and social workers –

  Yeah. That’d be right)

  – from her shoulder and drew another step closer. ‘You’re one of the Broad girls, aren’t you?’ she said, her eyes slitting slightly as she gazed up at her.

  Kelly slitted her own eyes right back. ‘So what?’

  ‘I was at school with your brother.’

  Kelly didn’t seem surprised by this information (like nits and the weather, the Broads got everywhere).

  ‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Jase?’

  ‘No. Paul.’

  Kelly looked blank.

  ‘Paul,’ the woman reiterated slowly (which Kelly strongly resented), ‘the devil worshipper.’

  Kelly tossed her head. ‘Satanist,’ she pronounced scornfully, ‘and it was only a joke, anyways.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I knew that.’

  Kelly jutted her chin out, just the same. She looked uncomfortable. The woman observed her disquiet.

  ‘So how’s he been doing lately?’ she asked.

  Kelly gave her a hard look, then, ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘Is he still handing out shoes at the bowling?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh. Moved on to better things, eh?’

  Kelly tried – and failed – to detect any traces of irony in her voice. She glared at her, but said nothing.

  ‘Well give him my best, if you see him,’ the woman continued staunchly, almost (but not entirely) running out of conversational impetus. ‘My name’s Winifred. I was his partner in biology. We dissected a cow’s eye together once – had a right laugh – before I transferred to Highworth in the fourth year.’

  ‘Highworth,’ Kelly rejoined bitchily, ‘well ain’t that lovely?’

  Silence

  Kelly inspected her nails (bitten down to the quick) then neatly laced her fingers together. ‘I don’t see him that much,’ she said primly, ‘he moved to Readin’.’

  ‘Reading?’

  Far from being mollified by this information, Winifred’s appetite for news seemed freshly enlivened by it. ‘Really?’

  Kelly scowled. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Reading, huh?’ She mulled this over for a moment. ‘Well good on him. Because let’s face it,’ she raised her brows, censoriously, ‘no one was ever gonna to give him a proper break around here, eh?’ She hesitated for a second (then promptly threw caution to the wind). ‘Least of all your psychotic, bloody sister…’

  Kelly shrugged (she just didn’t want to go there). Winifred took another step closer.

  ‘So can you actually scramble down the other side of that thing?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘The wall.’

  ‘Oh…’

  Kelly glanced boredly behind her. ‘Dunno. Maybe.’

  ‘I know it’s a bit cheeky,’ the woman wheedled (flashing that charming smile again), ‘but would you mind taking someone a message for me?’

  Kelly’s eye-lids lowered, ominously. ‘Man, do I look like your personal fuckin’ courier or what?’

  Winifred’s smile did not falter. It continued blazing. She was shameless, Kelly surmised –

  All credit to her for that

  – so she lifted up her legs and grumpily slung them over. ‘Which block?’

  ‘First Villa, flat three.’

  ‘Right.’

  She was already twisting around to scramble down when something suddenly dawned on her. She paused, mid-manoeuvre, gripping hard with her hands to stop herself from falling. ‘But that’s Kane’s place,’ she grunted, a hint of accusation in her voice.

  ‘Yes.’ Winifred made no apology for it.

  Kelly pulled herself up again, kicking a leg back over (sitting astride the wall now, a hand pushed down on to her skirt to preserve her modesty). ‘So what’s your business with him?’

  ‘With Kane?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kelly growled.

  ‘I don’t have any. I’m here to see his dad.’

  ‘Ah.’ Kelly was plainly relieved. ‘Well that’s a shame, ’cos Beede ain’t here, either. Neither of them are.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Kelly nodded. “Course I am. That’s actually who I’m waitin’ for.’

  Winifred seemed mildly irritated by this news. ‘But we arranged to meet at twelve,’ she said petulantly, ‘and it’s ten past already. He’s usually very reliable.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kelly conceded, unhelpfully.

  Winifred frowned and peered down at her watch. ‘Damn. I’ve got something I really, really needed to give to him,’ she muttered.

  Kelly rolled her eyes at this transparent little charade. ‘So pass it over,’ she volunteered boredly, ‘and I’ll stick it through his box.’

  The woman gave Kelly an appraising look. ‘Could I?’

  ‘Well I’m not gonna nick it or anythin’, if that’s what you’re thinkin’,’ Kelly snapped.

  ‘I know that.’

  Winifred opened her satchel and removed a large, brown envelope from inside it. She passed it up to Kelly. Kelly took it (the removal of a hand from her skirt causing a dramatic flash of her baby-pink g-string) and then placed it, neatly, on to her lap. A car horn sounded. The woman – Winnie – glanced over her shoulder. A boy was hanging out of a car window as it drove past, performing a wanking gesture. Kelly stared fixedly ahead of her.

  Winifred took a few steps back, fastening her satchel again. ‘I really do appreciate this,’ she said, ‘I’m in one hell of a…’

  She flapped her hand.

  Kelly nodded, sternly.

  ‘Bye then,’ Winnie smiled, ‘and thanks.’

  She turned and began to walk.

  ‘Hey,’ Kelly suddenly yelled.

  Winifred spun around. ‘What?’

  ‘He never went to Readin’,’ Kelly blurted out, her cheeks reddening, holding the jiffy bag in front of her chest now – like a protective corset – and folding her arms over it.

  Winnie looked confused. ‘Who didn’t?’

  ‘Paul. He died. Early last year.’

  It took a while for this information to sink in. ‘My God,’ Winifred murmured softly, ‘I had no…’

  She paused again, her mind obviously racing. ‘Shit. I’m really sorry…’

  She seemed stunned.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Kelly was suddenly full of bravura (her hard eyes brimming with indignant tears). ‘He overdosed. Solvents. Cans. He was addicted for years. That’s why my sister always used to hit him. That’s why he always had those awful fuckin’…’

  she put her hand to her mouth, touched her chin, to illustrate, ‘those spots, around here.’

  Winnie shook her head. ‘No. No, I didn’t mean…’ She paused, plainly in a state of some confusion. ‘I meant…’ she scowled, ‘I meant that I was sorry because we used together,’ she said finally, her own hand suddenly fluttering to her nose, her lips, ‘we started using together, as kids.’

  Kelly’s face dropped.

  Another car horn sounded. And before the woman – Winnie – could say another word, Kelly had stuck the envelope into her mouth, kicked her remaining leg back over the wall, and shoved herself off.

  THREE

  He just blocked it all out. It was as simple (or as complicated) as that. Denial – as the Americans were so fond of calling it – was Isidore’s basic coping mechanism (his ‘survival strategy’). That was how he dealt with it. And Beede (for all his cynicism) was sensible enough to just go along with the whole thing; the self-delusion, the subterfuge, the bunk, the bullshit.

  He didn’t want to push or to provoke or to challenge; because – bottom line – it was none of his damn business. And – more to the point – if he did (push, provoke,
challenge etc), where would it actually lead?

  Seriously?

  What could be gained? Dory was (after all) just a man; a human being, battling – against horrendous odds – merely to function; to hold down a job; to raise a family; just to…to…

  Oh God, here it comes –

  …to be.

  He was a simple man. A good man. He had integrity and dignity. He had pride –

  A little too much, occasionally…

  Dory was a person, not some psychological experiment. He was no benighted beagle or tragic lab rat; nobody’s fool, nobody’s victim – although Beede sometimes struggled to remind himself of this fact (he still harboured those Reformist tendencies in him – that persistent urge to just roll his sleeves up and dive in – no matter how diligently he might’ve tried to repress them).

  It could certainly make things difficult (this ‘denial’): the explanations, for one thing. Dory often ‘displaced’ his confusion on to the people surrounding him. Beede had read a book by R.D. Laing (The Divided Self) and several of Freud’s case studies (Wolfman, in particular). He’d quickly picked up on all the jargon, and tended to use it – not because he liked it or trusted it – but because it was a convenient short cut, and short cuts – in working scenarios – were an issue of sheer pragmatism.

  When it came to ‘displacement’, this particular situation was a perfect example. As they slowly picked their way back along the Bad Munstereifel Road (and it was a bloody treacherous hike, let alone with a horse in tow and your trousers sagging), at an approximate interval of every three to four minutes, Dory would turn and ask Beede (with complete guilelessness) why he had a horse with him, and what he thought he was doing with it (his territorial army background and his job in security made the whole thing even more dodgy; Dory – this Dory – had a ridiculously over-developed sense of propriety).

  And whenever Beede said (as he was obliged to, because it was true), ‘You took it, Dory,’ or ‘I found you with it – I was having coffee with my son…’ etc – he could see Isidore’s mind turning over, could see him putting two and two together (making five), could see him growing increasingly guarded and suspicious, as though Beede (for his own sick reasons – whatever they may be) was intent on surreptitiously inveigling him into some atrocious form of perjury.

  Because in Isidore’s mind (when he weighed it all up) the likelihood that he had stolen a horse himself (when he both feared and hated horses, and when he was intrinsically law-abiding) seemed somehow far less plausible than the likelihood that Beede had stolen it (or found it, or whatever) and that he had just ‘blanked out’ (as he sometimes called it) and then miraculously ‘turned up’.

  I mean wasn’t that more plausible? Even from the outside?

  Over time (their working relationship – their ‘friendship’ – had lasted about twenty-two months, in total) Beede had started to modify things. He knew that this was risky (perilous, even) but he simply could not stop himself. He’d long observed in Dory a kind of helpless paranoia (a desperate vulnerability) which somehow made the truth seem so immeasurably illogical (and stupid and cruel) that it was sometimes virtually impossible not to suddenly find yourself quickly inserting a small –

  Tiny

  – neat, white lie to try and make things more bearable. He knew that Elen sometimes did the same. It was difficult not to when you cared for a person. It was only natural (call it a maternal/paternal instinct) to feel a tugging need to assuage their distress in some way; to apply some kind of remedial blotter to the leaking ink of their misery.

  So approximately ten minutes into the walk Beede had begun to modify the story (it was boredom, more than anything. Dory would keep on asking the same questions – again and again and again – until he felt satisfied by the answers; and if he wasn’t satisfied he may well turn hostile. There might be –

  God forbid

  – an ‘episode’.)

  Consequently – according to Beede – the horse had simply ‘escaped from a field’. Beede had ‘just happened across it, wandering around in the road’, so had gone off in pursuit of it, then Dory had arrived – ‘in the nick of time’ – and had helped him to subdue it.

  In this new scenario Dory was quite the hero…

  ‘Yes, I know you hate horses. Don’t you see? That’s what made the whole thing so…so admirable.’

  The only problem with this approach was that Dory wouldn’t automatically give up on all his former scraps –

  Dammit

  – and a few hours later there was always the risk that he might suddenly remember being in the play area (for example) and then get all agitated and jumpy, and the questions would start over. He was tenacious. He was suspicious.

  Things were definitely –

  Definitely

  – getting worse on that score. Elen had said so herself (and Isidore had strongly indicated as much too, in some of his rare – but precious – moments of unselfconsciousness).

  On the positive side (and there was always a positive side), he was actually ‘going under’ slightly less often than he had done previously; but when he did, he ‘fell’ much more quickly, was in deeper, and for significantly longer.

  When he came to he was just a mess; he was in chaos. It was as if his brain had been placed inside a food processor (set on to its ‘chopping’ function); everything got hacked-up and jumbled together. And the end result? A horrible, indigestible mental coleslaw.

  On this particular occasion Beede had taken the precaution of checking his watch at his very first sighting of Dory in the French Connection, and he’d calculated (another quick peek. Yup) that it’d taken twenty-five minutes for him to return to himself (fully return – so that he remembered his address, his wife, his child, his date of birth; all the basics, in other words).

  Beede had been on hand for almost the entire process, and so far as he could gauge, things were definitely degenerating. Elen had told him that this’d happened twice before (a serious degeneration): once when they were first engaged, and once a short while after Fleet was born, when Dory had been forced to quit his job with Ashford’s Fire Department (a severe blow from which he’d still barely recovered).

  While Beede was certainly no expert, the attacks themselves seemed to have become far more…more perverse…more…uh…tricksy of late –

  For want of a better word

  More dangerous (even). They were stealthy. They seemed almost to creep up on him. They had no sense of propriety; were untimely, inexpedient and often socially embarrassing. They never (or very rarely) stood on any kind of ceremony. They were merciless. They were indecorous. They were delinquent.

  Previously – and again, this was chiefly relying on the information which Elen had given him – they’d had a much more controllable evolution. They were constant but reliable. Were predictable. Were minimal. Had exhibited an internal logic of some kind.

  Now there was something almost cruel, almost…

  Vindictive?

  Is that too emotional?

  Now there were ‘flashpoints’. And the paranoia was terrible. Really terrible. Much more severe than it had ever been (ever, Elen said). And the denial was absolute. But worse than all of this – worst of all – Dory had become – and this might not seem like much, superficially, but it was actually the most heart-breaking element of the whole thing – he’d become humourless.

  He’d lost his ability to just laugh it all off. He was really – really – brought down by it. He was depressed. He kept saying (for example) that he was finding it ‘hard to focus’ (he’d been twice to get his eyes tested over the last six weeks. His eyesight was pronounced perfect, on both occasions).

  He was barely sleeping. Insomnia. He’d always been a light sleeper (needed only four good hours, at most – like Margaret Thatcher), but there was no doubt – no doubt whatsoever – that sleep was a major factor in the whole scenario; a ‘trigger’.

  Nobody dared use the word ‘narcolepsy’, and certainly not in
front of him (he was German. Self-reliance was his watchword – and clarity, and precision). There was a stigma – Dory felt – with this particular condition, because of its inevitable connection with childhood trauma; the underlying sense of an inability to cope. At some fundamental level Dory closely aligned coping with his masculinity (coping was something he needed to do, and do well, to be a successful male).

  Isidore’s finer feelings aside, however, narcolepsy was definitely one of the medical conditions which best fitted his particular combination of symptoms. It didn’t fit completely (symptoms could be like that). Elen said it was as though Dory was missing a shoe, and narcolepsy was a slipper (ie they were related, but not entirely compatible). Beede found this description telling. He found it apt.

  The other unsayable word was – but of course – schizophrenia. This word made everybody panic (even Elen). But it was not a fearful word for Beede. For Beede it was just a combination of letters which didn’t even feature in his old Pocket Oxford. The closest they came to it there was ‘schist’; a kind of crystalline rock, whose components were arranged in distinct layers. Beede liked that. He’d tried to tell Elen about it (the ‘layers’ ie the concept of something separate but unified), yet for some reason she seemed to gain no palpable sense of relief from the idea.

  Of course Isidore had been medicated for his condition in the past – so far as it was possible (which wasn’t very far at all), because every doctor he visited seemed to have a different opinion (and these medical practitioners were few and far between). Dory hated doctors – found them ‘meddlesome’ – flew into a blind panic at the idea of ‘a diagnosis’. To be diagnosed was to be boxed up, to be compartmentalised, to be made separate, to be lost. For Dory a diagnosis represented ‘the death of hope’. His optimism – and he was optimistic, by and large – thrived in unknowing.