Nicola Barker - Heading Inland

Wesley pulled his weight. That, at least, was something, Trevor decided. After they’d packed up on their first night he invited Wesley to the pub for a drink as a sign of his good faith. Wesley said he wanted something to eat instead. So they went for pie and mash together.

Trevor had some eels and a mug of tea. Wesley ate a couple of meat pies. Wesley liked the old-fashioned tiles and the tables in the pie and mash shop. He remarked on this to Trevor. Trevor grunted.

‘My dad was in the navy,’ Wesley said, out of the blue.

‘Yeah?’

‘He taught me how to box.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Last job I had, I punched my boss in the face. He was up a ladder. I was on a roof. Broke his collar bone.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Trevor was impressed.

‘Nope.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Tried to prosecute.’

‘What!?’

‘I buggered off. I live my life,’ Wesley said plainly, ‘by certain rules. I’ll do my whack, but when push comes to shove, I want to be treated decent and to keep my mind free. See?’

Trevor was mystified. He ate his eels, silently.

‘I had a brother,’ Wesley said, ‘and I killed him when I was a kid. An accident and everything. But that’s made me think about things in a different way.’

‘Yeah?’ Trevor was hostile now. ‘How did you kill him?’

‘Playing.’

‘Playing what?’

‘None of your fucking business.’

Trevor’s eyebrows rose and he returned to his meal.

‘I want to do the decent thing,’ Wesley said. ‘You know? And sometimes that’ll get you into all kinds of grief.’

Trevor didn’t say anything.

‘Watch this.’

Trevor looked up. Wesley had hold of one of the meat pies. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and then pushed the pie in whole. Every last crumb. Trevor snorted. He couldn’t help it. Once Wesley had swallowed the pie he asked Jean — the woman who served part-time behind the counter — for a straw. When she gave him one, he drank a whole mug of tea through it up his left nostril.

Trevor roared with laughter. He was definitely impressed.

After a week on the job Wesley started nagging Trevor about the quality of the fruit he was buying from the wholesalers. ‘The way I see it, right,’ Wesley said, ‘if you sell people shit they won’t come back. If you sell them quality, they will.’

‘Bollocks,’ Trevor said, ‘this ain’t Marks and fucking Spencer’s.’

Wesley moaned and wheedled. He told Trevor he’d take a cut in his money if Trevor spent the difference on buying better quality stuff. Eventually Trevor gave in. And he took a cut in his wages too.

After a month, Wesley used his own money to repaint the stall a bright green and bought some lights to hang on it to make it, as he said, ‘more of a proposition’.

‘Thing is,’ Wesley observed, fingering the little string of lights, ‘we have to get one of the shops to let us tap into their electricity supply, otherwise we can’t use them.’

Trevor didn’t really care about the lights but he was grudgingly impressed by the pride Wesley seemed to take in things. He went to the newsagents and the bakery and then finally into the pie and mash shop. Fred, who ran the shop, agreed to let them use his power if they paid him a tenner a week. Wesley said this seemed a reasonable arrangement.

Things were going well. Wesley would spend hours juggling apples for old ladies and did a trick which involved sticking the sharpened end of five or six matches between the gaps in his teeth and then lighting the matches up all at once. He’d burned his lips twice that way and had a permanent blister under the tip of his nose. He’d pick at the blister for something to do until the clear plasma covered his fingers and then he’d say, ‘Useful, this, if ever I got lost in a desert. Water on tap.’

After six weeks things had reached a point where Trevor would have done anything Wesley suggested. The stall was flourishing. Business was good. Wesley worked his whack and more so. He kept everyone amused with his tricks and his silly ideas. The customers loved him. He was always clean.

What it was that made Wesley so perfect in Trevor’s eyes was the fact that he was a curious combination of immense irresponsibility — he was a mad bastard — and enormous conscientiousness. He wanted to do good but this didn’t mean he had to be good.

One morning, two months after Wesley had started on the stall, Trevor got a flat tyre on his way back from the wholesalers and Wesley was obliged to set up on his own and do a couple of the early deliveries himself into the bargain.

He took Fred at the pie and mash shop his regular bundle of fresh parsley and then asked him for the extension cord so that he could put up his lights on the stall. Fred was busy serving. He indicated with his thumb towards the back of the shop. ‘Help yourself, mate. The lead and everything’s just behind the door. That’s where Trevor stashes them each night.’

Fred liked Wesley and he trusted him. Same as Trevor did and all the others. Wesley, if he’d had any sense, should have realized that he was well set up here.

Wesley wandered out to the rear of the shop. He pulled back the door and picked up the extension lead. Then he paused. It was cold. He looked around him.

A big room. Red, polished, concrete floors. Large, silver fridges. And quiet. He could hear the noise from the shop and, further off, the noise from the market. But in here it was still and the stillness and the silence had a special sound . Like water.

Wesley closed his eyes. He shuddered. He opened his eyes again, tucked the lead under his arm and beat a hasty retreat.

He was in a world of his own when Trevor finally arrived that morning. On two occasions Trevor said, ‘Penny for them,’ and then snapped his fingers in front of Wesley’s unfocused eyes when he didn’t respond.

‘I’m thinking of my dad,’ Wesley said. ‘Don’t ask me why.’

‘Why?’ said Trevor, who was in a fine good-humour considering his tyre hold-up.

‘I was just in the pie and mash shop getting the extension lead for the lights. Out the back. And then I was suddenly thinking about my dad. You know, the navy and the sea and all the stuff we used to talk about when I was a kid.’

‘Your dad still in the navy?’ Trevor asked.

Wesley shook his head. ‘Desk job,’ he said.

‘Probably those bloody eels,’ Trevor said, bending down and picking up a crate of Coxes.

‘What?’

‘Those eels out the back. Making you think of the sea.’

‘What?’

‘In the fridges. He keeps the eels in there.’

‘How’s that?’ Wesley’s voice dipped by half an octave. Trevor didn’t notice. He was wondering whether he could interest Wesley in selling flowers every Sunday as a side-interest. A stall was up for grabs on the Mile End Road close to the tube station. Sundays only.

‘You’re telling me he keeps live eels in those fridges?’

‘What?’

‘Live eels?’ Wesley asked, with emphasis.

‘In the fridges, yeah.’ Trevor stopped what he was doing, straightened up, warned by the tone of Wesley’s voice.

‘What, like. .’ Wesley said, breathing deeply, ‘swimming around in a big tank?’

‘Nope.’ Trevor scratched his head. ‘Uh. . like five or six long metal drawers, horizontal, yeah? And when you pull the drawers open they’re all in there. Noses at one end and tails at the other. Big fuckers, though. I mean, five foot each or something.’

A woman came up to the stall and wanted to buy a lemon and two bananas. She asked Wesley for what she needed but Wesley paid her no heed.

‘Hang on a second,’ he said gruffly, holding up his flat hand, ‘just shut up for a minute.’