Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Gaffar pulled a face.

‘Upset?’

Gaffar nodded. ‘Go to room. Bang door. Masturbate. ’

Gaffar made a wanking gesture.

‘ Pardon?! ’

‘Yes. But is angry. No pleasure. Anger . This why I come here…’

‘You’re sayin’ Kane came home from a foot doctor, then went straight into his room and anger -wanked?’

He nodded. ’Wank of rage.’

He mimed wanking, fiercely.

Kelly looked stunned. ‘That’s disgustin’ ! You’re takin’ the fuckin’ rise out of me!’

‘Kane is man ,’ Gaffar told her haughtily. ‘What is girl to understand?’

‘Oh yeah?’ Kelly sat bolt upright, indignant. ‘You don’t think girls do anger-wanks?’

‘Never!’

‘ ’Course they fuckin’ do!’

Gaffar snorted, contemptously.

‘Geraldine. Don’t girls do anger-wanks?’

Geraldine widened her aubergine eyes and slowly shook her head. Gaffar grinned.

‘Fuckin’ hell ,’ Kelly swore, ‘why’d I even bother ?’ She paused. ‘So who is this geezer?’

‘For foot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is woman. He try find her. He no find her. For three days he say, “Is foot. Is sore foot.” But Gaffar see…’ Gaffar pointed to his eyes, ‘is not all for foot. Is more…’

He raised his brows at her, suggestively. Kelly seemed shocked by this news.

‘Whad’ya mean?’

‘This also Beede doctor. Kane want this number but he will not speak Beede for asking. Is more secret . He say Beede have foot the same. Verruca. The same . And foot doctor say is foot from Beede. Crazy foot.’ He shrugged.

Kelly stared at him, mesmerised. ‘I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what you’re on about,’ she murmured.

Geraldine sighed, deeply.

‘She know,’ Gaffar said, pointing to Geraldine.

‘ Her?! ’

‘Sure. She’s very intuitive. Very sensitive… ’

He smiled at her. She fluttered her long, false black lashes back at him.

‘Oi!’ Kelly interrupted. ‘I’m here too , remember?!’

‘Is same with letter,’ Gaffar continued, ‘you letter. First Kane see this letter an’…’ he pulled an explosive expression, ‘then I tell Beede, Ay! Kane read letter. Then Beede is… Grrrrr! Same. He say, “Is Kelly upstairs? Is Kelly in roof?”’

‘In the roof? He thought I was in the roof ?’

Gaffar shrugged. ‘Beede is clever man. He see this rug is move. He is…’

‘The fuckin’ rug again?’ Kelly exclaimed. ‘What’s the deal with Beede’s fuckin’ rug ?!’

‘I see in dice , yeah?’

‘ What? ’ ‘If Gaffar play dice, he see…’

Gaffar pulled the dice out of his pocket and shook them, thoughtfully.

‘Is like for…’ he scowled, ’the way they hold them, the way they throw, the way they behave when they win or they lose. It speaks volumes. Those Scientology nuts need 2,000 questions. I only need three or four shakes of these little babies… Is gift.’

‘So what was actually in the letter?’ Kelly asked.

‘ You know,’ Gaffar shrugged, ‘you give.’

‘I don’t know. Some black girl gave it me. I just passed it on. As a favour.’

‘Is nothing,’ Gaffar shrugged again.

‘Well it must be somethin’ . Otherwise everybody wouldn’t be gettin’ so worked up about it, would they?’

‘Sure,’ Gaffar conceded, ‘is old…uh… document. Some ancient shit or other.’

‘Well I wanna see it.’

‘How?’ Gaffar asked.

‘I want you to get it for me. Steal it.’

‘Sure.’

Gaffar shrugged.

‘Thanks,’ Kelly grinned at him, chuffed.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Good. I’ll be lookin’ forward to that. You can bring it along with the salad. I can’t even look at the shit they keep tryin’a force down my throat in here…’

She grimaced at a nearby nurse who was hurriedly removing a perfectly respectable-looking meal from one of the large, metal trolleys, then yelping as the heated plate singed her fingers.

Gaffar turned to Geraldine. ‘You wanna ride? On scoot?’

Geraldine shrugged.

‘In your dreams , mate,’ Kelly sternly interrupted. ‘You can’t fit her on there too. It’ll screw the suspension…’

‘Sure, sure…’ Gaffar waved his hand at her, dismissively.

‘No fuckin’ way .’

‘Is food…’ Gaffar pointed to an approaching nurse. ‘We go.’

Geraldine slowly stood up, clutched a hold of her skirt (and the several layers of black netting peeking out from underneath it) then curtsied at Kelly, dramatically, like a dissolute rag doll determined to steal her moment in the chorus line of an especially bad Royal Ballet production of The Nutcracker .

‘Up your arses,’ Kelly muttered, to nobody in particular.

‘Up you arses,’ Gaffar echoed, charmingly, then he slipped his arm around Geraldine’s soft waist and steered her away, quick-smart, turning — five steps on — and winking, mischievously, over his shoulder.

They looked ludicrous together, Kelly decided (glowering after them, furiously, as they paraded saucily down the ward). Gaffar was, after all, a conspicuous short-arse. Even by the most generous of calculations (and generosity wasn’t featuring high on Kelly’s current list of criteria), the Goth eclipsed him (in her heels) by at least half a metre.

As an adult, Kane felt almost entirely divorced from the child he once was. On the rare occasions he chanced to look back (and, by and large, he tried his damnedest not to) he saw a small boy with sandy hair, kneeling down, dutifully fastening his mother’s shoe. Or blankly pushing her wheelchair. Or carefully washing her face with a pale, blue flannel. Or clumsily brushing her short, blonde curls (trying — and generally failing — to make the soft fringe stand proud).

He never looked back at this alien boy-Kane (this hollow child) with any sense of pride or tenderness–

Magnificent?

Was she out of her mind?!

— all he saw was a welter of mistakes, failures and botch-ups: a life brimming with bad news and worse news. A life of chapped hands, blisters and pressure sores. A life entirely composed out of small yet irksome physical details.

Perhaps the cruellest (and the most wretched) truth was that it’d never come easy. He’d loved her — certainly — but it’d always been a chore. He’d often felt ashamed of her. Angry with her. Sullen. Sometimes he didn’t do up her buttons properly — on purpose, out of sheer spite — and she’d have to ask him to do it again. Sometimes he’d pretend he hadn’t heard her calling. He’d make her wait: two minutes, three minutes, five, seven, ten. Sometimes he’d send her into coventry, or poke out his tongue behind her back, or break things, ‘by accident’.

It should’ve come easier. But it didn’t.

One time he’d poured hot soup on to her lap — her arm had unexpectedly gone into spasm and had smacked into the bowl as he held it (she’d always told him to rest it on the table, never in his hand, but wiping the drips from the bottom of the spoon, and then that careful, that–

Yawn

— interminable journey from the table to her mouth…).

The burns on her thighs had taken months to heal. He’d applied tube after tube of Calendula (the smell of it, even now, made his blood run cold). But she didn’t punish or admonish him. She’d said she was fine (‘I’m fine …Just tip some ice into a dishcloth. That’s it. Quick, quick. Try and keep it…that’s right. That’s good…That’s…’). She refused — point-blank — to let him call out the doctor.