Nicola Barker - Darkmans

He sneezed, then winced, then blinked. Elen was standing next to him, holding the sweater in her hands. He gazed down at her, almost in wonder…

Roses.

No…

No.

Lilies?

Dory had moved several paces back.

‘Perhaps you should drive Lester home, Isidore,’ Elen spoke at normal volume, perfectly calmly, ‘on the way to your evening shift?’ Dory peered down at his watch, ‘ Gracious —the time…Yes. Of course. Good idea.’

He turned to Lester, put a hand on to his shoulder, and then slowly began guiding him through the washing. ‘Keep your head tilted…’ Elen reminded him.

‘Will you be all right here?’ Dory murmured as they passed.

‘Of course. Keep that head back , Lester,’ she reiterated, grabbing Kane’s jacket from the crook of her husband’s arm, passing it over to him and then motioning him, casually, towards the house.

‘And do try not to bleed on the upholstery,’ she persisted, smiling over at Kane as she spoke, almost sardonically. ‘It’s a company car, remember?’

The moment Gaffar left him, Beede promptly set about rearranging his old rug (and all of the surrounding furniture) with a fierce — almost neurotic —meticulousness. He turned the rug and angled it, precisely (using an old-fashioned, yellow-fabric, roll-up tape-measure), then slotted the sofa, the side-table and the small chair back into position by dint of those slight indentations in the carpet’s weave which’d long been established by their former tenure. He stood over the burn for a while (breathing heavily), and inspected it, morosely.

It was a small mark, but ugly. He winced, placing a weary hand to his temples. They were thudding. Throbbing. He felt quite empty — hollow — like a neatly rinsed-out milk bottle. He could feel nothing— hear nothing — bar the sound of his own blood pumping–

Just…

So…

Exhaust…

He threw himself down on to the sofa and closed his eyes, with a heavy sigh. Then something odd suddenly struck him. His eyes flew open again.

‘But what on earth did he mean…?’ he muttered. ‘Just some cheap reproduction?’

He peered down at the rug, frowning.

He felt…He shook his head–

Don’t be silly

Just tired

Too tired…

But he continued to sit there and to stare.

After several minutes he stood up. He scratched his chin. He dropped — carefully, somewhat creakily — on to his knees and he inspected the rug more closely. He ran his fingers through its short, stiff fibres. Then he lowered himself on to his stomach (prostrating himself, as if for prayer) and took a long, deep sniff.

He closed his eyes and really concentrated. He sniffed again. Then he raised himself up, scowling. ‘Smell’s changed,’ he murmured.

He scanned the room, slightly panicked, his anxious gaze finally settling on the large and precarious pile of books to which Kane had had recourse a mere three days earlier.

He reached out and grabbed the compact paperback of A.R. Myers’ England in the Late Middle Ages . He held it in his hand for a minute and inspected the cover — not so much the illustration as the intimate, individual details of his own particular edition: the creases, the wear, the tiny marks in the patina.

He ran a gentle index finger up and down the spine which had been so well-flexed over time that the binding had cracked and whitened, rendering the title and the author’s name virtually indecipherable.

He opened the book up. The first page was loose (he nodded slightly, remembering), and it was waterstained, too (again, a small nod).

He’d bought it second-hand. The price had been written, in pencil (£2), in the centre of that first, loose page, at the very top–

Good…

— and just to the right of the price was a stamp — a circular stamp — which read ‘Davison School, Worthing’. There was another stamp — identical in colour (a faded blue-black) — slightly lower down, which read: 7 September 1971.

He flipped his way through the text, stopping, every so often, to inspect his own comments (scribbled messily but emphatically into the margins). As he paged, he visibly relaxed, appearing to find everything utterly familiar and in perfect order.

‘It was an age of contradictions,’ he read quietly, at one point, ‘as vivid as the bright colours which it loved…’

He smiled, weakly, placed the book back on to the pile again, stood up, and walked through to the kitchen. He grabbed his post in one hand, and the kettle in his other (to confirm that it was full enough–

Yup )

— but then he froze, slapped down the letters, shoved his glasses up on to his head and gazed intently at the kettle’s lid. Why did it seem so different , suddenly? He wobbled it, tentatively, between his finger and his thumb…

Hmmn

Was the fit less easy? He closely scrutinised each detail: the base, the filament–

Scandalously limed up—

What’s wrong with me?

Should’ve sorted that out weeks back…

— the handle, the spout. Then he cursed, softly, under his breath. ‘Enough, Beede, you old fool,’ he murmured, ‘ enough.’

He pushed down his glasses, plugged in the kettle and strolled through to his bedroom where he was enthusiastically greeted by Manny, the cat. He squatted down and gave him a gentle pat. The cat’s backbone arched in response, and his tail shot up. Beede smiled, then emitted a sharp, light, utterly instinctive pswee-pswee noise using his teeth and his tongue.

The cat loved it, rubbing up against him — purring blissfully. Beede’s eyes settled, flatly, on his bed–

Tired…

— on the counterpane, then dropped down lower, to the legs, then finally, to the carpet. He noticed — with a tiny fluttering in his chest — that the bed seemed to have been moved recently. Or nudged. Just by a couple of inches. He observed the indentation from its weight in the pile of the carpet.

He stared at the bed again. It was heavy. Wooden. Darkly varnished. Victorian.

So what…?

Or how…?

He stood up and walked over to it. He ran his hand along the headboard. He looked for ridges, for scratches, for familiar imperfections. The cat followed him, tangling around his ankles, mewling.

He glanced down, as if relieved by the distraction. ‘Hungry, are we?’ He moved over to its ‘food station’ (ie its water bowl, its food bowl, its litter tray; all neatly arranged on a plastic mat — although the tray — as was the animal’s habit — had been fastidiously nudged clear, and the granules from its several careful evacuations had been scattered over the carpet).

The food bowl was still half-full.

‘So what is it, boy?’ Beede asked. The cat gazed up at him, quizzically, then its head snapped around as the kettle reached boiling point and turned off with a sharp click .

‘Strong coffee,’ Beede murmured, ‘a pint of it. Care to join me?’

He headed back into the kitchen again, the cat at his heels. He opened the cupboard and removed a jar of Nescafé and a cup. He placed them both down on to the counter, grabbed a teaspoon from a drawer, unscrewed the coffee jar and dipped the spoon inside. His eyes settled — momentarily — on the first letter in his pile of post. He released the spoon. He reached out and picked it up. He inspected the address, irritably. He tore it open.

Inside was a copy of some minutes from a meeting of the Ryan Monkeith Road Crossing Initiative. He scowled as he glanced through them. His scowl deepened as he unfolded a handwritten note from a woman who signed herself Pat Higson/Monkeith which said: