Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  But oh! How he admired their different clothes! The tunes they hummed! Their casual mobility! Their fantastic tv! Sometimes he’d hear them performing skits, or repeating catch-phrases to each other, and he’d stop, and listen, and just drink it all in. Devouring, not exactly the ‘meaning’ (it was incomprehensible – ‘My parrot is sick…’ meant nothing to him) but the rhythm. And that wonderful sense of blithe containedness at the heart of all humour (bizarre but self-perpetuating, like an Escher painting).

  How complete they all were! How unified, how whole! How desperately – how violently, how pathetically – he envied them!

  Rebellion was never really an option. Isidore loved his parents and he believed in their philosophies (why shouldn’t he? They were all living, breathing proof of Kneipp’s peerless efficacy).

  At dawn he would rise with his father and they would walk together, barefoot, in the dew-heavy grass. Summer or winter, it didn’t matter. It was a magical ritual, a ‘fundamental’.

  They would talk about everything. His father would discuss the process of photosynthesis or the life-cycle of the stag beetle, he would curse the folly of the British Trade Union Movement (‘Thank God we are here, away from this indiscipline’), or question the motivation of Germany’s Green Party. He believed in biology, but not in Ecology. Politics, he held righteously, was how you held yourself, what you ate and how you lived. It was a series of apparently mundane decisions. It was ‘everyday’, ‘personal’, radiated ‘from within’. The other stuff? He’d snort, contemptuously: ‘Isidore, my boy, just showing off.’

  Clare (she quickly modified her name to Clara) would quote whole pages, verbatim, from Homer’s Odyssey as she bustled, busily, around the Kurhaus kitchen. Isidore journeyed with her – sat quietly on a stool at the counter – weeping real tears for the unfortunate Odysseus (being hounded himself by vengeful Poseidon, appealing for help from the fleet-footed Athene, battling fearlessly with the Cyclops…

  Take that, you…

  Uh?

  WAAAH!).

  He believed in God. He believed in Cruel Destiny…

  But where was his Ithaca? Where was the home from which he’d strayed, and for which he yearned – more than anything –

  Anything

  – to finally return?

  Was it here? There? Everywhere?

  It was definitely a puzzle.

  And the answer to this riddle?

  Closer, much closer, than he could ever have imagined…

  Under his nose. In his mouth. On the tip of his tongue.

  Three things:

  The letter.

  The skinny boy (Lester) and the disabled dog.

  The paternity swab.

  He’d been emptying a wastepaper basket into the dustbin when he came across an early draft.

  It was written in Elen’s neat hand –

  Dear Mr Wrotham,

  –it said –

  I am writing, as a professional (this was later crossed out) as a doctor* and speaker of Latin* (*this had been clumsily inserted, in a different, scruffy, ill-formed script) to draw your attention to the fact that there is a ‘slight’ (replaced as) ‘serious’ problem with the format of your current edition of the Ashford Region Phone Book…

  That was it.

  Underneath, in note form, and in that unfamiliar hand again (presumably as a gentle reminder for the letter’s second version, which must’ve been more successful than the first, because there was no sign of it in the bin – he’d checked) was written:

  A Priori – Garry Spivey (the double ‘r’ in Garry had been forcefully underlined).

  Say about the back-handers.

  Say your respectable.

  Mention AAABuilders Ltd but not that Im on a job 4 u.

  NB!!!****Quote the Collins Dictionary!!!

  Eh?

  Dory frowned and turned it over (as if an explanation might be neatly written on the back – ie: Hello. This is Elen. It’s the start of my menstrual cycle and I have gone temporarily insane.

  But no. Nothing).

  He sat down and thought about the letter for a while. He simply couldn’t make sense of it. Why would Elen be writing a letter to the phone book people? And about its format of all things?

  It just…

  She just…

  She wouldn’t.

  No.

  Then who…? Who had prompted her to do so? And whose notes were those (on the bottom of the page)?

  Harvey’s?

  Elen had made absolutely no mention to him –

  None

  – of a conversation with Harvey.

  In fact Elen hated Harvey (insofar as Elen could possibly hate anybody) –

  Didn’t she?

  I mean she slandered Harvey at every given opportunity…

  Or have I got this all…?

  Am I…?

  Lester.

  Lester!

  Maybe it was for him? Maybe this was something for Lester’s benefit? Maybe it was some kind of…of reference for the boy…

  No.

  It’s a letter about the format of the phone book, that’s what.

  Oh God –

  But it doesn’t make any…

  Dory suddenly crumpled the page up, in his hand. ‘Damn her,’ he murmured softly, his eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Damn her.’

  Sometimes he would see things – strange things; like a tiny, winged devil (for example), its claws caught up in the fabric of the bedroom curtains, or an exotic bird, cowering under an overturned teacup on the kitchen draining-board – and he would blink, and he would warn himself that he was asleep (that this was a brief, waking dream of some kind).

  It happened fairly regularly. He was thoroughly accustomed to it. It was simply what he liked to call ‘a trick of the mind’.

  And so it was with the little dog. He’d been strolling out of the downstairs lavatory (still fairly preoccupied by some troubling issue at work) and he could’ve sworn that he’d seen a small dog trundling by on a cart (heading out of the hallway and into the living-room, at a slow trot).

  The dog was not on the cart so much as attached to it (by its back legs and hips, with two leather straps). The cart – a bright red colour, jaunty, almost gipsy-ish in design – was presumably some kind of replacement for its back limbs which – even from where he stood – seemed ill-formed and limp (possibly crushed – he idly mused – in a terrible accident).

  He slowly shook his head. Then he grimaced. Then he turned, climbed upstairs, and forgot all about it.

  Several days later he accidentally happened across Lester, in the kitchen, casually holding something under his arm –

  Huh…?

  He drew closer. He blinked a few times, just to make sure. It was small. It was brown. It was definitely –

  Definitely

  – animate. And it bore –

  No getting around it

  – quite a striking resemblance to the creature he’d seen previously in his ‘waking nightmare’.

  Lester was making himself a cup of tea, one-handed. He seemed almost indecently familiar with the lay-out of the kitchen.

  ‘Is that your dog, Lester?’ Dory had asked, staring nervously at the forlorn, little creature and feeling a strange, tingling sense of déjà vu. Lester (balancing the dog on his hip, as though it were a baby or a rolled-up sleeping bag) glanced over at him in apparent astonishment.

  ‘What’s that?’

  He appeared to be experiencing some difficulty in comprehending Dory’s accent.

  ‘The dog,’ Dory pointed, ‘is it yours?’

  ‘Mine?’

  Lester seemed genuinely shocked by the notion.

  He quickly glanced down at the dog; firstly, as if to double-check that it actually was a dog, and secondly (once he’d established its fundamental dog-ness – Snout? Check. Paws? Check), whether it might reasonably be described as being his.

  ‘No it ain’t,’ he eventually muttered (just the slightest hint
of superciliousness in his voice – ‘What?! As if I’d own an animal like that!’).

  Dory had no particular fondness for canines. He’d never developed an affinity for them as a boy – his family hadn’t ever owned one. His father had been almost hysterically fearful of animal hair (because of his allergies, although – ironically – he’d always been extremely passionate about horses; worse luck for Dory, whose horror of them bordered on the phobic).

  The dog in question seemed very obliging. It wasn’t a young animal. It had the dismal air of a creature which had seen better days: an animal which had journeyed – and possibly some distance – beyond its prime. When Dory inhaled, he caught just a suggestion of a whiff from it –

  Mouldy wheat –

  Wet sand –

  Ammonia

  He frowned and grimaced. His nostrils twitched.

  Lester expertly slung the animal around his neck (the way some kinds of eccentrics liked to carry their cats) to free-up both hands to prepare his tea. It was a long dog (its extended spine better facilitating this unconventional kind of transport), although it certainly wasn’t a dachshund (the only type of long dog Dory could actually name, off-hand).

  ‘Then whose is it?’ Dory persisted.

  ‘Huh?’ Lester’s hearing seemed temporarily impaired. He was wearing a gangsta-style kerchief around his head (red, with tiny white stars – which might’ve been the source of his problem) and a pair of cream-coloured dungarees, which flapped a couple of dismal inches above his ankles, like two shabby sails against the skinny mast of his leg.

  ‘Is it Harvey’s dog?’

  ‘Harvey’s dog?’

  Lester snorted as he picked up the kettle. ‘Harvey don’t own no dog, man. An’ if he does, then I’m it. I’m Harvey’s fuckin’ dog.’ Lester tapped a self-righteous middle finger against his chest as he poured.

  Dory chose to ignore this particular flight of fancy (Lester currently seemed to have a vested interest in presenting himself publicly as Harvey’s tragic victim. His dupe. He’d increasingly started to dress – and speak – like one of the colourful panoply of characters in Alex Haley’s Roots).

  ‘Well if it isn’t yours, and if it isn’t Harvey’s…’

  ‘It ain’t,’ Lester reaffirmed.

  ‘…then what exactly is it doing here?’

  ‘It lives here,’ Lester said, shooting Dory a sharp, slightly incredulous look.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Dory snapped.

  Lester merely shrugged (as if long-accustomed to Dory’s vagaries), grabbed the biscuit tin out of the cupboard, removed a gingernut and shoved it, whole, into his mouth.

  ‘Well what are you doing with it?’ Dory asked, infuriated.

  Lester slowly chewed, then swallowed.

  ‘I’m carryin’ it,’ he said, as if this truth was so readily apparent that

  Dory’s question hardly warranted a response.

  ‘But why?’

  Lester’s rolled his eyes. ‘Because she’s paralysed, Guv.’

  ‘Good God.’

  Dory’s mind temporarily flashed back to the little, red cart. ‘It can’t walk?’

  Lester’s brows rose fractionally, as if to imply that, yes, this was generally what was to be understood in most English-speaking nations by the word.

  ‘So how does it…?’

  Dory wordlessly mimed ‘movement’.

  ‘She drags herself around by her front legs,’ Lester said, ‘but it knackers her out. So sometimes she trots along on her little cart.’

  ‘Cart,’ Dory repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ Lester almost shouted, ‘cart. Cart.’

  Dory was temporarily lost for words.

  The dog began panting.

  ‘Stress,’ Lester mused, gazing down at the dog and then over at Dory, sullenly.

  The dog continued to pant. Dory was sure he could smell its ailing breath.

  ‘You thirsty, Honey?’ Lester gently murmured, carrying the animal over to a blue, ceramic water bowl (DOG inscribed – in bold letters – along its outside) and carefully placing her down next to it.

  Dory had never seen this water bowl before. He had also never seen the food bowl (of a similar design) sitting by its side. The food bowl contained a modest handful of dried, brown pellets.

  While he looked on, incredulously, Lester casually opened a cupboard (next to the sink), removed a bag of dog food and topped up the bowl.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Dory finally murmured, ‘I have a disabled dog living in my home which I am both watering and feeding. It travels around on a small cart, and apparently it belongs to no one.’

  Lester said nothing. The dog was staring up at him, poignantly.

  She was still panting. She had not drunk.

  ‘I don’t even know…’

  Dory was staring at the dog now, quite overwhelmed by fastidiousness.

  ‘I don’t even understand how a creature like this might go about…

  I mean how does he…’ Dory paused, delicately ‘…without…?’

  ‘She,’ Lester interjected, cunningly side-stepping Dory’s indelicate question about faecal hygiene with a bold statement of sexual orientation.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Michelle.’

  ‘Michelle?’ Dory frowned.

  Michelle?!

  ‘It’s on the tag, stupid.’

  ‘It has a tag?’ Dory stood to attention. ‘Where? Around its neck?’

  He marched over to the dog, squatted down next to her and grabbed her collar. The dog did not shy away from him. She stared up at him – passive and unblinking – with her two indecently round, fudge-brown eyes –

  King Charles…

  Uh…

  Dory carefully manipulated the collar until its silver tag was visible. On one side (scratched scruffily into the metal, apparently by hand) was the name MICHELLE. On the other side…

  Dory blinked.

  His own address –

  But how?!

  Lester crammed another biscuit into his mouth, carefully picked up his teacup, and then reached down and grabbed the dog.

  ‘You’re a real caution, mate…’ he informed Dory, gamely, through his mouthful. Then he winked, as if in plain acknowledgement of some kind of subterranean covenant between them –

  An ‘understanding’?

  Dory stared back at him, blankly…

  What ‘understanding’?

  Did Lester honestly think he’d been taking the rise out of him? Or was it…

  Uh…

  The other way around?

  Dory couldn’t be certain –

  DAMN THIS UNCERTAINTY!

  On his way out, Lester idly tipped his head towards the kitchen table. ‘An’ she shits in a box,’ he chuckled, coarsely, ‘as if you didn’t already know that…’

  Dory – still squatting – glanced blankly ahead of him –

  Yup

  – sure enough: there, under the table, just along from the small, wicker basket with its comfortable, fleecy lining: a neat, plastic litter tray. And just along from that?

  Oh dear God…

  Surely not?!

  A disturbingly large plastic carton of Wet Wipes.

  For clearing up.

  Over time, and with his father’s guidance, he’d learned to control the worst of his behavioural excesses. But it’d taken a staggering amount of resolve, and a monumental effort of will. He’d had to be careful, heedful: unstintingly mindful. He could never relax. He could never ‘let go’.

  He’d had to watch himself, constantly – like a doctor, standing jealous guard over a favoured patient – to try and predict – with any kind of accuracy – how certain things (certain ‘urges’, certain ‘impulses’ – the ‘tics’, the ‘jerks’, the ‘spasms’) might ultimately ‘play out’.

  If he anticipated a problem (as he did, quite often), then he needed to do so well in advance (‘Forewarned,’ as his father was so fond of saying, ‘is forearmed’).

 
Cold water helped. Being entirely immersed. The release – the shock. And feverfew (the herb) –

  Its taste!

  So bitter!

  Plenty of exercise (10-mile jogs, daily, as standard) and a very, very low protein diet.

  And then, of course, there was The Witness.

  Laurie had come across this concept in a German self-help book. ‘The Witness’ was the calm voice within, the authoritative voice, the dispassionate voice. It was not controlling. It did not demand or judge or dictate.