Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘Pardon?’

They were striding along the tarmac, heading towards the car.

‘I said is he a dog , Mama?’

‘A dog?’ she looked flustered. ‘Why?’

‘Because he lives in a kennel.’

‘No…’

She began searching for her keys. ‘He doesn’t…that’s just…’ ‘Then why does he live in a kennel, Mama?’

‘It’s not a kennel, Fleet. It’s just called a kennel.’

‘Can Michelle come too?’ Fleet persisted.

‘Come where?’

‘To his kennel.’

Elen located her keys.

‘He doesn’t live in a kennel, Fleet. He lives in a cottage.’

She deactivated the alarm on the car.

‘But can Michelle come, anyway? Just in case?’

‘In case of what?’

‘In case it really is a kennel?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

She unlocked the car. She opened the back door. ‘I need you to climb inside now, please.’

‘But what about the kennel , Mama?’

‘There isn’t a kennel, Fleet…’ She helped him inside. ‘Say a big hello to Michelle.’

‘Hello, Michelle!’

He reached out his arms to embrace the dog.

‘Right,’ she told him, ‘I’m just going to fetch Daddy.’

She slammed the door shut.

‘Stay put, okay?’ She waggled her finger at him, sternly, through the window.

It was the smallest, quaintest, daintiest house imaginable — more like the bijou cabin of a jaunty, Congolese paddle-steamer (scythed from its original base and then dumped, unceremoniously, on to the beach-front) than a formal place of residence.

As she rapped on the knocker (a small, brass fox which glanced cheekily over its shoulder — the hinged appendage being fashioned from its lustrous, brush tail), she noticed a dark slick of mud on her cuff.

He answered promptly and welcomed her inside. He was wearing a pair of old jeans and a slightly creased, green jumper over a pale blue shirt with a thin, red, woollen tie knotted loosely at his throat. He seemed very different now from how he’d appeared on the beach: smart and yet dishevelled. Intellectual. Bohemian , almost. His hair was longer than she’d imagined — brown, flecked with grey, curling up at his collar. And he smelled — she couldn’t help noticing — of sandalwood and sea-spray. No. No …Sandalwood and glue. A nice smell.

‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ she said, squeezing past him into the tiny hallway, ‘I just had to…’

She gazed around her, in awe.

The cottage was minute and filled — literally to its rafters — with papers and with books. She found herself stepping over a large pile of old files just in order to gain access.

‘Don’t worry,’ he insisted, keen to mitigate her anxiety, ‘it’s taken me a while to find everything I was searching for. I’m afraid the place is a little… uh …’

As he spoke he observed the back of her long skirt draping itself over the pile of files and the fabric pulling tighter as she slowly moved forward.

‘Hold on a second there, let me just…’

He bent down and lifted the hem.

She turned, surprised.

‘Oh…’

‘Sorry. Your…’

‘Whoops!’ She lost her balance. He let go of her skirt and grabbed her arm. She crashed into the wall, upsetting a pile of books. He crashed in after her, upsetting another. The files also toppled and reams of articles, exam papers and letters slithered out over the tiles.

Behind them, the door slammed shut and then blasted back open, gusting a small tornado of correspondence down the hallway.

‘Chaos!’ he exclaimed, laughing, his arms now propped either side of her.

‘Oh God , what have I…?’

She tried to bend over to retrieve the papers. He took a quick step back to allow her room to manoeuvre, but as he stepped his heel slid on a shiny, plastic, folder binding and his legs shot out from under him. He hit the opposite wall and then crashed to the floor, a third pile of books cascading around him.

‘Ow.’

He was still laughing (clutching at his spine), but more ruefully, this time.

Elen crouched down to assist him. She took his hand. He had beautiful hands: long, lean fingers with neat square-cut nails; fine but active hands — cut and callused in places (one fist in particular bearing at least two plasters).

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, plainly concerned, preparing to pull him up. ‘That was quite a fall…’

The door slammed shut and then blew open again. They both glanced towards it, instinctively. Their eyes widened.

Standing there, almost filling the entire door frame (having offered scant warning of his approach — no steady crunch of footsteps on the shingle path, no casual knock, no tentative call) towered a filthy, steaming bogman, a huge, marshy spectre, a prehistoric remnant of some kind.

‘Dory!’ Elen exclaimed, dropping Charles’s hand and clambering to her feet. ‘Aren’t you keeping an eye on Fleet?’

Dory didn’t respond. He just smiled. Only his eyeballs and his teeth remained uncongealed by slime.

‘Uh…Charles,’ she stammered, ‘this is my husband, Dory — Fleet’s father…’

‘How do you do?’ Charles quickly pulled himself upright. ‘You have a wonderful son…’ he proffered Dory his hand. ‘He does you enormous credit.’

Dory ignored Charles’s hand, jinked deftly around him, pushed roughly past Elen, kicked his way through the piles of books and papers, strode purposefully down the hallway, turned left and disappeared from sight.

‘I’m sorry,’ Elen said, gazing after him, mortified. ‘I’m afraid he’s…he’s…’ she struggled to locate the requisite word…‘he’s…well, he’s German ,’ she finished off, flatly.

‘Oh… Yes . Of course.’ Charles nodded and carefully closed the door, double-checking that it was properly latched this time.

Elen half-turned and noticed — to her horror — a large patch of mud on the wall where Dory had shoved past her. Charles also noticed. His brows rose slightly.

‘If you could get me a J-cloth,’ she began, ‘maybe dampen it a little…’

‘Don’t worry,’ he smiled, bending down to try and straighten up the files (several of which now bore large, muddy prints on them).

‘But if I can wipe it down quickly…’

‘I’ll wait until it’s dry,’ he said firmly, ‘and just brush it off.’

She knelt down to assist him, chastened.

‘I’m actually meant to be redecorating,’ he added, ‘throwing some stuff out, hanging some shelves…’

His hand touched hers as they reached for the same scrap.

‘Will Fleet be okay?’ he asked, quickly removing his hand. ‘Waiting alone in the car?’

‘He has the dog with him,’ she answered, ‘the spaniel. Michelle. But I shouldn’t be too long…’

‘You’re right,’ he straightened up (with a slight grimace), ‘I can sort this out later.’

Elen also stood. She patted down her skirt. She shoved her hair behind her ear.

‘I’ve put a small box together…’ Charles Bartlett politely indicated the way (this act rendered all the more stark in its chivalry by the boorish behaviour of the mud-drenched Dory). Elen walked ahead of him, picking her way, carefully, down the corridor.

The box in question (and it wasn’t especially small) stood open on a battered, walnut-veneered desk in a corner of the tiny living-room. She glanced around her: more books (literally thousands of them), two lovely, brown, antique leather smoking chairs (nestled in the lap of one — like a cat — a small, black, somewhat incongruous-seeming laptop), an ancient record player perched on top of an old Bird’s Custard Powder crate (a messy worm-cast of LPs writhing along behind it), but no evidence of Dory to speak of. Although — she frowned — there was a door…Partially ajar, in the opposite wall, with what looked like — but was it? — a small, muddy smear above the handle.