Nicola Barker - Behindlings

White had made everything brighter. And he’d turned a corner. The snow was now hitting the left side of him. He half-squinted into it. He frowned. He stepped onto the stile for added height. He stared. He swore. He glanced up onto the roadway –

Quiet

— he felt around inside his pockets, located the agent’s mobile, turned it on, pressed the first digit, experimentally.

Ted’s aunt answered –

Hello?

He cut her off.

The second –

Work

Ted’s voice.

‘I need you,’ Wesley said, ‘bring me some rope. Heavy rope. At least twenty foot of it…’ he paused, ‘and a box of eggs, and the librarian. Meet me by the flyover.’

He completed his instructions and dialled another number. He tapped his foot, impatiently. The set of his expression indicated some kind of call-answering service. He did not seem surprised by this. He waited for the beep, then spoke.

‘I’ve got your message, Gumble Inc, ’ he said, bending forward slightly as he spoke, clutching his stomach, his lips white with fury, ‘that was my father’s boat. I know exactly what you’re doing. We had a deal. Doesn’t matter how things turned out. Fuck the bloody context… ’

He paused and gazed at the boat awhile, and then something strange suddenly struck him. ‘Arthur’s not playing, ’ he said, his voice quite astonished, ‘ is he?’

He chuckled, shook his head, then focussed again. ‘Back off, or I’ll do as I threatened. I don’t care about the Old Man. I’ll sacrifice the Old Man…’ he paused, squinted towards the boat, saw it move — saw it shuddering — as a choppy incoming wave hit a supporting strut.

He swore under his breath, cut the line and tossed Ted’s phone into the river, adjusted the vixen and jumped over the stile, butting his head like an angry ram into the flurry of snow as it fell on him.

She had thought it might be the postman, or Wesley, even –

Had Ted actually given him a key?

— but it wasn’t either of them. It was Bo.

He was standing on her doorstep, cheerfully exuding his own special kind of vitality (the kind male models cultivate on the back of wholegrain cereal packets) and he was smiling widely at her — gloating, more precisely — larger than life, smugger than hell, thicker than shit — and that was the worst part of it –

The ignorance

So she smiled right back at him, wished him a hearty good morning, kicked him hard in the gonads (was pleased by the accuracy of her attack, considering she was wearing her slippers and they were liable to fly off without warning) watched calmly as he bent over, clutching himself, squeaking (you’d think a man of his stature might produce a better sound than that), then (never one to let an opportunity pass) she lifted her knee, brought down her hands (meshed forcibly together), united these two disparate body-parts in a sterling manoeuvre, heard a gnuff, then his nose crack (or at least she hoped she had — hoped it wasn’t a tile on her front step), shoved him off her porch, told him to watch out for her fucking hydrangea (he didn’t) clucked her tongue furiously, glanced up, saw Dewi walking out onto his verandah, snorted, showed him the finger, went back inside and slammed her door shut behind her.

Have I gone too far?

Two minutes passed.

Silence

Then the shouting commenced.

Bo’s voice — in the road — but directed away from her; towards another…

She did it HERSELF!

— he yelled –

You fucking love-lorn IDIOT

She wrote it HERSELF

And she MAINTAINED it

All these fucking YEARS

She MAINTAINED IT HERSELF

D’you HEAR me?

She maintained it HERSELF

I HAD NO BLOODY PART IN IT

Katherine burst out laughing — a loud laugh, violent, almost hysterical — then turned, smacked her head into the wall — her clenched fists flying out behind her — and commenced crying so fiercely that her snot ran in a waterfall down onto the floor.

The rope had been the easy bit — he was on good terms with the local chandler (sold him his premises, August 1997), and the eggs were a cinch, but the librarian — the fragrant Eileen — proved a trickier proposition altogether.

He was lucky to catch her. She was half way up her street, picking an unsteady route along the icy pavement in some exceedingly inappropriate footwear — little lime green boots with spiky heels (at the sight of their inappropriateness, his mouth twisted up at its corners). Not dressed for the cold particularly (a lemon-yellow raincoat, a pale yellow cashmere frock, a silk scarf with seashells on it). Ted pulled up and hailed her from his old, white company Fiesta.

‘I’m a little late for work, Ted,’ she lied, turning her face away and flapping her hand at him like he was a persistent middle-eastern child beggar who’d — quite meanly yet miraculously — detected some unfathomable sign of weakness in her.

Ted knew for a fact that the library didn’t open for a further two hours. But she looked exhausted –

Hollow

His heart went out to her.

He noticed the scratch on her cheek. Just one scratch. Yet deep. It trickled down stickily onto her neck, like the viscid tail of a sweet, raspberry jam pip. Her nails were clean, though, and neat and newly painted. She was holding a yellow mesh shopping bag dotted with perky plastic daisies.

‘I have a message from Wesley,’ Ted murmured, almost swallowing the name whole he was so anxious about offending her with it.

Eileen glanced sharply into the back of his car (perhaps Wesley might be hiding there, ready to spring out at her, unprovoked?) and saw the rope, coiled up, like a boa constrictor. She put her hand to her throat, automatically. ‘Why?’ she asked distrustfully, ‘what does he want with me?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve arranged to meet him just out of town. He asked me to bring you along. And some rope. And some eggs.’

Her eyes immediately filled with tears. ‘Does he plan to humiliate me again?’ she asked tremulously (as if humiliation was all she deserved, all she could ever really hope for).

It suddenly dawned on Ted what kind of a picture his shopping list had painted for her. He winced. And yet…

‘Did he humiliate you before?’ he asked, battling to evict the image of Eileen in awful bondage, her yellow cashmere sweater dress irrevocably yanked asunder…

The gradual drip of the yolk down the front of her cleavage

The slither of the albumen down her pale, porcelain shoulder

She nodded. Sniffed. Lifted her glasses. Patted at her eyes with the knuckle of her index finger.

‘Did he hurt you?’

Ted’s hand clenched his leg. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. But he enjoyed the tantalising pinch of his thumb and his index finger.

She nodded again, lifted her bag, looked inside it for a tissue to try and salvage her mascara.

‘Did he…’ Ted indicated towards her cheek.

She glanced up and shook her head.

‘No. A beak,’ she muttered.

‘Oh.’

‘He hurt my pride,’ she said, then shrugged, modestly, ‘that’s all. And I probably deserved it. I’ve let things… I’ve let things slide… ’

Ted couldn’t work out whether her modest shrug made things better or worse. He did note however, a corresponding — an unexpected twitch in his genitalia.

Eileen removed her purse from her handbag along with a powder compact, a bone-handled hunting knife, some throat pastilles and a heron’s head preserved for posterity inside a transparent plastic bag.