Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘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…?’

‘S he ,’ 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.

You found it when you closed your eyes (and emptied your mind, and looked around). It was strong and quiet and ever-watchful. The Witness stood proudly apart from the ego-driven side of the consciousness. It was the Civil Servant of the head. It did a little filing, made reports, took dictation. It was consistent and impassive and utterly reliable.

Laurie counselled his son to ‘make a friend’ of The Witness. To ‘refer’ to The Witness whenever things felt like they might be in danger of getting out of hand. He also taught him some rudimentary self-hypnosis techniques (involving touching certain body parts — the ear-lobe, the shoulder — and tapping them, repeatedly).

Each of these approaches — the exotic, the rudimentary — was more or less successful (there was no pot of gold at the end of Dory’s rainbow; no get-out-of-jail-free card, no ‘miracle cure’). Yet when taken en masse , they formed a workable ‘control network’, a kind of ‘therapeutic mesh’ (or safety net) which Dory (gentle Dory, obliging Dory) was more than happy to fall into.

That crazy river inside — that uncontrollable wave of words and hysteria — stopped flowing for a while. The tide withdrew. But it didn’t disappear. It simply entered a different sphere — his dream-life — and controlled him from there.

On the day he turned sixteen (and with his father’s help) Isidore designed and crafted a pair of strong, oak doors for his tiny cubby. Thick-cut, huge-hinged, padlocked. And every single night, from that time on, his parents lovingly contracted to bolt him in.