Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  ‘Is it the scarf?’ he asked, proffering it to her. She backed off, still growling.

  Kane threw down the scarf and stood up. His chair squeaked against the tiles. He felt strange, almost intoxicated. He thought about having a smoke to calm his nerves. He gazed down at the dog. The dog seemed perfectly fine again. She was dragging herself over towards her water bowl.

  Okay…

  He took a quick turn around the table to burn off some energy. After two or three steps, though, he stopped. He stared at his feet, at his Blundstones…

  Ow!

  He was sure there was something…

  He squatted down, untied a lace on one boot and pulled it off.

  He stared inside the boot –

  Nothing

  He tipped the boot upside down –

  Nothing

  He frowned. He inspected his sock –

  Nothing

  He slowly and suspiciously put the boot back on. He stood up. He stamped his foot. It felt fine.

  Hmmn.

  He began walking around the table again. On his way around he noticed a large, dark-blue, faux-military-style jacket hung up on a peg on the back door. He stared at it, scowling, then he walked over and quickly slipped his hand into one of the jacket pockets. He withdrew a small, brown pill bottle without a label on it and a neatly rolled-up length of bandage. He shook the bottle. He unscrewed the lid, frowning, and peered inside of it. The bottle was half-full of large, unwieldy-looking white pills. He tipped one out on to the palm of his hand and stared at it, still frowning, then he gently touched the tip of his tongue to it –

  Eh?

  He touched his tongue to it again –

  Chalk –

  Just chalk.

  He tipped the tablet back into the bottle (his head cocked, nonplussed), replaced the lid and returned the bottle and the bandages to the pocket. He reached into the second pocket. This pocket was full of plastic…

  Rubbish

  He withdrew a small piece of packaging and was just set to push it straight back inside again when he paused and took a second look…

  What?!

  It was the packaging for a cat collar – but a special cat collar: a collar for a cat, with a bell on it. And shoved in alongside that? A Polaroid. A crumpled-up Polaroid. He carefully straightened it out. It was a photograph of a cat. A cat wearing a collar. A cat wearing a collar without a bell attached. And not just any cat, either –

  Oh no…

  It was Beede’s cat. Beede’s Siamese cat –

  Manny?

  Is that his…?

  A door suddenly slammed shut in another part of the house. Kane quickly returned the photo and the packaging to the coat pocket and turned around, panicked, grabbing his cigarettes from his jacket –

  I was just gonna pop outside for a quick…

  Elen looked dazed – dreamy, distracted, even – as she drifted back into the kitchen. She’d changed her clothes and her hair was now wet – newly washed – falling in thick, dark tangles across her shoulders. She was wearing a dressing gown (a plain, brown dressing gown) which was loosely fastened with a belt. And under that? Nothing but a short, thin, pale grey slip.

  As she entered the room she was dabbing at her face (her eyes, at least) with the sleeve of the dressing gown –

  Crying?

  Was she…?

  And because her arm was lifted the dressing-gown belt had come loose. Kane could see the lean lines of her body beneath it, the slope and lift of her small breasts, the jut of her hip-bone, the neat angularity of her knees…

  She didn’t immediately acknowledge him. She simply walked over to the table, picked up the grey scarf and buried her face in it. Her shoulders shook a little. Kane almost moved towards her then, but still, something stopped him.

  Elen drew a deep breath, threw down the scarf (almost in disgust), turned and walked over to the sink. She stared into it for a while, blankly. She sniffed, forlornly and clumsily scratched at the back of her calf with the toes of her other foot. Kane stared, his lips parting, at the pale, soft flesh behind her knees.

  Then he dropped his cigarettes. They landed on the tiles with a clatter.

  ‘John?’

  She spun around, terrified, almost losing her balance, grabbing on to the cabinets behind her, her eyes wide, her nostrils flaring. She stared at him, wildly, almost blind – it seemed – with fear. Then she began blinking, very rapidly, as if not entirely sure…

  ‘Kane?’

  At first she seemed astonished by his presence, and then (almost in the same instant) just as astonished that she’d somehow connived to forget that he was there.

  ‘Oh God. I just…I didn’t…’

  She grabbed at her dressing gown and pulled it tightly around her.

  Kane bent down to retrieve his cigarettes in a brave attempt to mask his dismay.

  ‘You were gone for so long…’ he murmured, straightening up again, ‘I was just going to…’

  ‘How stupid of me…’

  She looked around her, confused.

  ‘What was I thinking?’

  She slapped the side of her head, with frustration, slightly harder – perhaps – than she should have.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  He didn’t like to see her slap herself.

  ‘No. It’s just…I went upstairs to check on Fleet,’ she paused, frowning, ‘didn’t I? And then…Then I must’ve dozed off. I was sitting on the bed…’

  She scratched at her head and felt her wet hair…‘Yes. Then I went to have a shower. I washed my…I was just feeling so…’ she shuddered. ‘Isn’t it cold? Is the heating on? It feels so cold.’ She quickly walked over to a heater and felt it with her hand. Her hand was shaking, he noticed. It had almost a blueish pallor.

  ‘I should go,’ Kane said, feeling mortified. ‘In fact I must go…I’ve got…’

  He turned and tried the back door. It was locked. He looked for a key. He saw one. He twisted it and tried the door again. It remained tightly shut. He glanced up. There was a bolt, at the top. He unfastened it and pulled the door wide. He stepped outside.

  ‘You did the washing up…’ he heard her, still babbling, still anxious.

  ‘That was so…’

  He began striding across the patio tiles towards the side-gate.

  ‘Kane?’

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  She was standing on the back step, her arms wrapped around her.

  She looked tiny. Her feet were bare.

  ‘Kane?’

  She stepped down on to the patio tiles.

  ‘Go back inside,’ he said irritably. ‘You’ll freeze.’

  ‘Please don’t leave.’

  ‘Go back inside,’ he repeated firmly.

  ‘No.’

  She was shivering. Her teeth started chattering. But she didn’t move.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, almost angry now. ‘Go back inside.’

  ‘Don’t leave,’ she said, ‘I’m very sorry…I wasn’t…’ Her voice was almost inaudible. He closed his eyes for a moment. He clenched his hands into fists. He was infuriated by her.

  ‘You’re tired,’ he said.

  ‘I just want to speak to you,’ she said. ‘I just need to tell you something.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ He turned. She didn’t answer. She just continued to stand, as before.

  ‘Tell me what?’ he repeated.

  She held out her hand, plaintively.

  ‘I should go,’ he said, but then he took a tentative step towards her.

  ‘Just one second,’ she promised.

  ‘Fine.’

  He walked straight up to her. He stood in front of her, almost too close. He stared down at her, intimidatingly. But she wasn’t intimidated. Instead she reached up, with both hands, and gently grabbed the white hood on either side of his face, then slowly, very deliberately, she stood up on to her tip-toes and pulled his head down towards her. Soon both of their faces were obsc
ured by the hood’s dense fabric. Their noses were almost touching, and their lips.

  ‘What do you want?’ he murmured, mystified.

  ‘What do you want?’ she echoed, then she wobbled slightly. He reached out his hands and found her waist, her ribs. He fastened his hands around her and supported her. She opened her mouth slightly, as if to speak, but she didn’t speak. She just lightly exhaled on to his upper lip. He opened his mouth, too. Their lower lips touched. Her breath was warm and smelled of milk. He felt the cold tip of her nose almost brushing his cheek. Neither of them moved.

  ‘Mummy?’

  As quickly as it had begun, it was done with. She was there, then she was gone – back into the house again to deal with her son.

  Kane felt shaky. He pushed back his hood. He put out an unsteady hand to support himself against a piece of scaffolding. The scaffolding creaked and shifted. He quickly let go again. He glanced up, shoving his hand into his pockets and taking out his cigarettes. He tapped one from the packet and propped it between his lips. He located a box of matches, opened it, removed a match and struck it. He lit his cigarette, shook the match out and tossed it down, grimacing, on to the concrete.

  ‘Well it’s none of your damn business, for starters,’ he growled.

  ‘I didn’t say it was,’ Peta shrugged, ‘I just said it was perplexing, that’s all…’

  She paused. ‘Which it is.’

  ‘Kane and I are very different,’ Beede insisted.

  ‘No. That’s not true. From what I can tell you’re actually very similar…’

  ‘Similar? You think so?’ he sneered. ‘Well maybe that’s at the root of it, eh?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  She refused to be intimidated.

  Silence

  ‘Very similar,’ Beede scoffed.

  ‘You both take things so much to heart…’ Peta murmured.

  ‘Kane?!’ He blinked at her, astonished. ‘How can you possibly think that? You’ve met him once. Trust me, Kane takes nothing to heart. He lives in the moment. If he doesn’t like a situation then he walks away from it or he devours a pill to blank it out…’

  Peta looked shocked. ‘That’s harsh, Beede…’

  ‘He’s a thief,’ Beede maintained calmly, ‘a dealer.’

  ‘He eliminates pain,’ Peta neatly recontextualised. ‘He brings people relief.’

  Beede snorted, contemptuously.

  Peta ignored this. ‘Weren’t you ever close?’ she asked.

  Beede shrugged. ‘There was never really room…Heather was always so…’

  He shook his head, irritated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know…Needy. Overpowering.’

  ‘Even before she was ill?’

  He nodded. ‘Kane was her refuge – her retreat. He was just this tiny, open, credulous little receptacle into which she poured all her dreams, all her frustrations – her disappointments. She was just one of those characters…Very funny, very charming, openly manipulative – sometimes almost…I don’t know…almost hilariously so. And beautiful – intensely beautiful. People just loved to be around her, to do things for her. Kane was no exception…’

  ‘But didn’t the relationship concern you?’ Peta asked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Well it doesn’t sound entirely…’

  ‘Healthy? Functional? No. It wasn’t. And naturally I spoke to her about it. I warned her. But she didn’t care. It was just her nature. Her way…’

  Beede idly picked a currant out of his rock cake and gently pressed it between his forefinger and his thumb. ‘Heather stifled the boy. She always did. And for my part, I was always determined that if there was one thing I could do for him – as a man, a father – it would be to leave him to his own devices. Not to criticise. Not to control. Not to manipulate or to judge. And that – to the best of my ability – is what I did.’

  ‘Was it difficult?’

  ‘It nearly killed me…’ he smiled, grimly. ‘But that which doesn’t kill us…’

  He paused. ‘And in hindsight it was probably a mistake. The damage – the trauma – was way too deep. Kane quickly confused freedom with licence…’

  ‘What about the divorce?’ she asked (determined to understand every detail of the scenario). ‘How did that work?’

  Beede popped the currant into his mouth. ‘She squeezed me out,’ he shrugged, ‘or I squeezed myself out. It just ended. We were relieved. There were no ill feelings on either side.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘No,’ he glanced over at her, blankly, ‘there were always other projects, other demands on my energy…’

  ‘But then she fell ill?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Although it wasn’t quite as dramatic as…I mean it was all very slow, very gradual…’

  He frowned.

  ‘Why the frown?’

  ‘Because…I don’t know…Because it all sounds very dramatic, very tragic, even, and to a large extent it was, but the illness wasn’t entirely…It wasn’t…’ he continued frowning, ‘I mean doctors often like to imply that particular kinds of people – particular kinds of characters – have a sort of…of predisposition towards certain types of ailments…’

  ‘Like a choleric person developing an ulcer, say?’

  He nodded. ‘In Heather’s case the illness seemed like a cruel but strangely coherent articulation of the person she already was. I mean she wasn’t a shirker – God forbid. Absolutely not – she was a dancer for Christ’s sake…They’re machines, they’re completely driven, totally indestructible right up to – and sometimes beyond – the point of collapse. But Heather made a career out of projecting herself as vulnerable, as embattled, as winsome and fragile, while underneath – below all those layers of connivance, below all that tinsel and netting and ribbons – was this astonishing feistiness and vitality, which is what people responded to, and which – God knows – I responded to at some level. It was what I loved about her, and what Kane loved too, I don’t doubt…’

  ‘So she moved to America?’ Peta interrupted.

  ‘Yes. Early on. They thought the warm, dry weather…’

  ‘And you didn’t mind her dragging your son along?’

  ‘Mind?’ Beede looked surprised. ‘Of course not. It just seemed…’

  He shrugged again. ‘Inevitable, I suppose.’

  ‘You’d detached yourself,’ she sighed, ‘even at that stage.’

  He grimaced. ‘Perhaps.’

  He took another bite of his cake. Peta returned hers, virtually untouched, to its Tupperware container.

  ‘Were you pleased when they came back?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He nodded. ‘I was relieved. For her sake as much as Kane’s. They moved into the bungalow on Hunter Avenue…’

  ‘And how was Kane by that stage?’

  ‘Kane?’

  ‘Was he different? Had he changed?’

  ‘Uh…I don’t know. He was always a good boy. He had a wayward side. He certainly doted on his mother…’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  Again, the surprise.

  ‘Yes, how did Kane feel about you?’

  Beede slowly shook his head, as if it hadn’t actually occurred to him to consider this before. ‘I couldn’t honestly say…I tried to be there for him, I suppose. But I had this sense that he’d moved on, that he didn’t really relish my involvement, that he’d…’

  ‘What? Grown up? Grown beyond you? Become an adult?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ Beede nodded. ‘I suppose he had to some extent. He was so amazingly attentive. So diligent when it came to Heather. He’d become her partner – her dancing partner – if you see what I mean. Her rock. Her support. He always knew the best thing to do, what tablet to take, what number to call…’

  He suddenly scowled. ‘Until, of course…Well…’

  He shook his head. He put down his cake. He glanced over towards her, with a shrug ‘…until he didn’t, obviously.’

 
He clasped his hands together and stared out through the rain-splattered windscreen.

  ‘What happened?’ she couldn’t resist prompting him.

  He sighed. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. But didn’t seem to object to being prompted.

  ‘They were living downstairs at that point. I’d divided the flat into two parts. I was upstairs. The pain had been especially bad, I remember, especially gruelling. But there was actually a reason for that – it later transpired – because she’d been stockpiling her painkillers, her sleeping pills. She’d been planning for months to commit suicide.’

  ‘Did Kane know?’

  ‘Oh yes. God yes. He was intimately involved. Her motor skills were so diminished by the end. She found it difficult to swallow. And then there was always a danger that she might regurgitate what she’d taken once the process was actually under way. She didn’t want to risk that. Kane was an integral part…’

  He fell silent.

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Fifteen. It was all so cold, so calculated. His sixteenth birthday was just two days away.’

  ‘Did he want his mother to die?’

  Beede turned towards her, scowling. ‘Of course not. He loved her. He doted on her. But he would’ve done absolutely anything she’d asked him to do.’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. They had a special day together. They celebrated his birthday early. There was a cake, I remember…and presents…’