Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Ted’s gentle erection immediately subsided.

She finally located her tissues, took one out of the packet, and dabbed softly at her injured cheek with it.

‘Isn’t that Wesley’s knife?’ Ted asked, eyeing the decapitated bird’s head, worriedly.

She looked down, almost aghast, automatically opened her hand and dropped it.

‘I don’t know why I took it,’ she said, panicked (as if she’d only just that second committed the theft — had been caught red-handed), ‘I just wanted to stop him from… from hurting… ’

Ted climbed out of his car and retrieved the knife for her. He handed it back, blunt-end first. She thanked him and thrust it into her bag.

‘Leo said he’d called the police,’ Ted said, glancing over his shoulder.

Her eyes widened behind her glasses.

‘I don’t think you’d want them to find you with that…’ he indicated towards the bird, ‘I believe they’re protected. Wesley was very…’

She looked down, shaking a little.

‘He was very specific on that point,’ Ted concluded.

‘I was intending to bury it somewhere,’ she explained.

‘We could do it together,’ Ted heard himself saying gently, ‘I could drive you to the beach or to… to the flyover, underneath it, where the soil is soft. We could bury it there.’

‘Are you laughing at me Ted,’ she suddenly asked, ‘just like he did? And just like the Turpin girl did? Is there something… something funny about me? Am I very silly?’

Ted’s gut told him to put out his hand and touch her hair. He put out his hand. He touched her hair.

It was unbelievably stiff.

‘I think you’re magnificent,’ he said, leaning forward, as if to sniff where he’d touched (what was the logic in that?) but he kissed her, instead. On the ear. This wasn’t exactly the place he’d been gunning for. But it was a start –

Wasn’t it?

Eileen hiccuped — quite unromantically — turned her nose sharply into his cheek and then dropped her bag, heavily, onto his feet.

Beyond the quick and the dead

Lies Sirius, First God of Dogs,

Who stood up

51 times

Who fell

Only 8,

But who spawned

Sweet Beauty and his Angel

So the gone might gander

She scampered past the Wimpy (head down, hood up) but she was a fool — she told herself –

A fool

— if she honestly believed she was going to get away with it. To pursue was his life-blood; the hunting, the hounding, the heeling, the trailing…

She suddenly didn’t

— I don’t

— she suddenly didn’t –

I don’t…

I don’t…

— she suddenly didn’t like it –

This feeling

— she suddenly began to appreciate…

Damn

He was out of there like a shot — she heard the door slamming, a muffled curse, his oilskin flapping like an ill-adjusted mainsail as he jogged heavily — unevenly –

Was that a limp?

— behind her.

‘Where’ve you been?’ he finally gasped, placing his hand onto her shoulder, exerting a certain amount of pressure. He was limping. Just slightly. And the ground was slippy. The snow was still coming down in unpredictable flurries. It was fiercely cold.

‘I got distracted,’ she said flatly and struggled to keep on walking (like a girl who’d stormed out on her faithless lover — a girl who wanted to stop but whose pride wouldn’t let her).

‘Distracted by what?’

He struggled to keep up.

‘By the past.’

He didn’t seem to want to register this answer. It was too bald. Too pretentious.

‘What did the guide want? Did he give anything away? Is he working with the fraud squad? Did he say?’

She shook her head. Her eyes were burning –

Strained

— by all that persistent gazing; that staring outward, that squinting forward. They were approaching the intersection opposite the Bingo hall, alongside the pub. It was relatively busy for the time of day it was. She picked up her pace.

Doc — and quite unexpectedly — did the complete opposite. He stalled. He stopped in his tracks. Jo tried to walk on — almost oblivious — tried to cross, but the lights changed and she was obliged to turn back again. She puffed out her cheeks, frustratedly.

‘They got to you,’ he said. His voice sounded the same. His facial expression did not alter. But there was a palpable difference in him — a transformation. She glanced over, slightly alarmed, unsure what her own face was doing –

Can’t trust it

— only wanting not to engage him or to encourage him, or to offend.

‘Nobody got to me,’ she retorted blankly.

‘I can tell they did,’ he answered, staring at her intently, ‘I can see. ’

She shrugged. She felt like a heel. But she was out of her depth here. Hooch’d been right –

The miserable little shit

‘Well that’s… that’s just too bad,’ he murmured, gently shaking his head. His voice was soft now. He seemed — she frowned — almost disappointed. No –

No…

— Fascinated?

No…

— Fearful?

Yes

She suddenly remembered how Shoes had looked, the previous day, after their stint in the library. That same look of… that same…

Loss?

And she felt it too. She was feeling –

An absence?

A short-fall?

A deficiency?

‘Please don’t be…’ she grappled for the appropriate adjective, brushing some snow from her eyelid.

He began to back off, very slowly, as if he’d inadvertently kicked a dozing cobra. She felt alarm, as though — by some miraculous process — the real Josephine Bean was suddenly standing behind her, perhaps laughing maniacally, brandishing a firearm, resting it insolently across her shoulder.

‘Something bad’s happening here,’ Doc said ominously, his shoulders hunching up, glancing around him. ‘He keeps walking the island, and walking, and walking… like he’s… like he’s locked. Like he’s stuck. I’ve never seen it before. Never. Something’s missing. Something’s gone wrong, ’ he gazed straight at her, ‘and now you’ve become party to it…’

‘No,’ Jo shook her head, ‘I just got… I’m just… . caught up… I’m not… not…’

Involved

The light had changed. The traffic was now stationary.

‘He doesn’t…’ Doc said, then stopped abruptly, looking around him, patting at his pockets as if he’d momentarily forgotten something.

‘Are you alright, Doc?’

She was worried for him.

‘He doesn’t talk …’ he started up again, then he stopped, like an old-fashioned record player with a faulty wind-up-mechanism.

‘Doc?’

She took a step closer. She held out her hand.

‘He doesn’t…’ he was briefly re-energised, ‘Wesley doesn’t talk to the people Following… that’s the whole… the whole point. ’

He concluded his mantra, then gazed at her, balefully, as if she’d contravened something inviolable.

‘He thinks I’m…’ Jo pushed back her hood, as though this small gesture might underline her irreproachability, ‘he thinks I’m a fraud,’ she said, ‘but I’m…’