Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘I manage pain,’ Kane interrupted her, haughtily, ‘if you must know.’ She lounged against the bench, grinning. ‘You consider it a calling ?’ ‘Yes. I eliminate pain. I bring people relief when they can’t find it elsewhere.’

Peta stopped smiling. ‘Is this because of what happened to your mother?’

‘No,’ he snapped, ‘it’s because of what happened to me. My experience.’

‘I see.’

‘And my experience is that there’s simply no need for it.’

‘No need for what? Pain? You really believe that?’

‘Of course. Why celebrate pain when you can celebrate pleasure?’

‘Because of J.C., I suppose,’ she answered, boredly.

‘Who?’

‘Jesus Christ. The crucifixion. We strive to be better people because we believe — or we’re taught to believe, at least — that Christ suffered to deliver us from sin. And when we suffer — like Christ — we are brought closer to God, or if not God, then beauty. Without pain — the theory goes — we lose the ability to experience true ecstasy…’

‘Sin? Suffering? ’

Kane was having none of it.

‘Too old-fashioned for you, eh?’

Kane gave this question some consideration. ‘I mean it’s not that I don’t like antiques…’

‘You like me ,’ she smiled, ‘and I’m antique.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what’s your moral vocabulary consist of, then?’ she wondered. ‘I mean what are its parameters?’

‘Is that a good cigar?’ He ignored her question. He couldn’t answer her question. And it seemed pointless, anyway.

‘Why?’

‘It smells good,’ he grunted.

‘It’s very pleasurable , certainly,’ she teased him. ‘Would you like a puff?’

‘I’d love one.’

Peta pulled off a glove and strolled over to him again. Kane tried to lift his head at her approach, but he could not.

‘Poor boy,’ she said, carefully sweeping his fringe from his eyes, then tightening her fingers around it and yanking his head up by his hair.

He grimaced. His face was glowing. His vision was bleary. He blinked, repeatedly. She made as if to proffer him the cigar, but kept it too far away from his lips for actual contact.

‘Know about cigars, do we?’ she teased him as his lips kissed thin air.

‘A little,’ he demurred, humiliated.

And then, before he’d even finished speaking, she suddenly pushed the cigar into his mouth. It hit his teeth. He tightened them around it. He bit into it. He took a deep puff. It tasted wonderful.

‘Is that good?’ she whispered softly, touching her nose to his ear. ‘Fantastic,’ he said, still holding on to it, still inhaling, his head spinning (five hours? How the hell’d he do it?).

‘Really?’

A droplet of sweat trickled down from his hairline. She stopped it with her finger.

‘Yes. Really ,’ he croaked. ‘Is it Cuban?’

He was mortified to discover himself developing an erection.

‘Nope,’ she dried her finger, off-handedly, on the front of his t-shirt, then snatched the cigar back and released his hair. His head dropped, sharply. ‘It’s from the local Spar , you ignorant goon ,’ she snorted, shoving it back into her mouth and turning away from him, contemptuously, ‘£1.99, for a pack of four.’

She stalked — quietly, like a cat — across the oak floor and back over to the hot bench where she grabbed a hold of her glove. She gazed at him, ruminatively, as she pulled it back on. ‘You do know you’re not locked in there?’ she said.

Kane didn’t respond. He remained exactly as he was.

‘You’re not locked in there,’ she repeated. ‘You do know that?’ Still nothing. No reaction.

She shrugged, removed the cigar from her mouth, and wandered off in search of an ashtray. She found a blue and white striped saucer propped up on the draining-board in the kitchen area. She extinguished the cigar on it and then tipped the stub into the rubbish bin.

‘I only smoke the damn things,’ she confided, ‘to spur myself into giving up.’

She sighed. ‘Although it’s disturbing how the mind — the taste —will so readily adapt itself, if needs must, from something extremely good to something so much worse…’

As she spoke Kane lifted his arms, tentatively. He felt the top half of the pillory shift. He raised them again, this time more determinedly. The pillory slowly creaked open, like a nutcracker.

And then, just as he thought he might’ve actually got away with it…‘Impressive hard-on, coincidentally,’ she muttered.

Gaffar took five sugars with his tea.

‘Will you be taking any tea with your sugar?’ Beede asked, looking on, appalled, as he tipped the sachets in, one after the other.

‘I think this…uh…this pretty manager is hot for you,’ Gaffar crooned, delightedly.

‘Pardon?’

’Like father like son, eh?’

‘How d’you mean?’

Beede seemed affronted.

’You like to play the angry, old bull, but there’s definitely a touch of the randy, old goat in there somewhere…’

‘So we definitely need to get to the bottom of this,’ Beede interrupted him, carefully stirring his mug of oxtail soup.

‘Huh?’

‘This problem you seem to have with salad.’

‘ Urgh …’ Gaffar waved his hand, dismissively.

‘How long’s it been going on?’

Gaffar took a small sip of his tea, then smiled, vacuously.

‘And don’t think for one moment that I’m falling for that ludicrous “simple Turk” act,’ Beede snapped.

‘Is no big deal,’ Gaffar waved his hand again.

‘You don’t have any idea as to what’s at the root of it?’

Gaffar shook his head.

‘No clues at all?’

He shrugged.

‘Well when did it all start ? Do you remember?’

Gaffar frowned. ‘Always,’ he said, ‘since boy. But not so…’

He grimaced.

‘Not so severe? Not so bad? It’s grown worse? Is that it?’

Gaffar nodded. ’Before it was simply…uh…a slight aversion…’

‘Before what?’

A woman with a pram hurried past them and inadvertently swept Gaffar’s collection of sugar wrappers on to the floor. He reached down to retrieve them.

‘So what did your parents make of it?’ Beede asked, once the Kurd had straightened back up again.

Gaffar stared at him, blankly.

‘Your mother? Your father?’

As he uttered the word ‘father’, Beede observed Gaffar flinching slightly.

’Your father?’ he persisted. ’Does he get leaf afraid sometimes same like what you do?’

‘Susa Pope…’ Gaffar mused, gazing distractedly over Beede’s shoulder.

‘You get this lady number?’

‘Pardon?’

‘For phone?’

He mimed ‘phone’.

‘Susan Pope ?’

‘Sexy lady manager.’

Gaffar made a suggestive clicking sound with his tongue.

‘Don’t you like talking about your father, Gaffar?’

Beede went straight for the jugular.

Gaffar shrugged. ‘My father he is long time…uh…’ he pondered over the right word ‘…dead.’

‘Oh. Right . I see. And your mother?’

’Tough as a pair of old boots,’ he smiled fondly, ’God preserve her.’

‘So what age were you when he died?’

Gaffar shifted in his chair and peered under the table again, as if one of the wrappers might’ve secretly eluded him.