Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Quiescence

The only real option available to them.

He’d thought his way around it –

Solidly

— and even thinking about doing anything –

Even thinking it

— seemed incalculably perilous.

He’d been awake for so long now — was so tired –

Tired

— that his thoughts were shaping themselves into a repetitive pattern; a sing-song; a nursery rhyme; an exhaustive –

Exhausting

— rhythm; until all other noise, all other stimulus –

Outside

Within

— lost its independent significance; became just so much –

Wholly unnecessary

— additional percussion.

Sasha was sleeping.

She shifted when the boat creaked –

Then the reindeer shifted –

The boat shifted –

It creaked –

Sasha shifted –

Arthur flinched, held his breath –

Expecting the…

Expecting…

— then everything, very gradually, righted itself again.

Or did it?

Huh?

He was sure that she must be frozen –

Wesley’s child

He was –

C… c… c… c…

— so icy. He couldn’t feel –

Cheeks

Nose

Fingers

Feet

— hardly anything, in fact, and he no longer understood the angle he was at. How acute was it? How far back?

He could tell — could sense, somehow — that the door was now rather more like a kind of a lip (a pike’s mouth, on the diagonal, snarling out of the water).

The mud of the bank seemed further off, and the tide was obviously higher –

Higher

— but not quite high enough. He could feel it lapping at the back of the craft, could hear its eager wavelets keenly whispering their perpetual brown commentary.

It was definitely getting brighter. By rights he should’ve felt a sense of relief, but instead he felt the illogical fury of the industrious miner, on leaving –

Blink

— the close dark –

Blink

— of the cruel shaft

Blink

— and cringing into the light.

‘If I go,’ Sasha lifted her head, abruptly, as though talking in her sleep, ‘then Brion will come after me. And that’s exactly how we got into this stupid mess in the first place.’

‘Perhaps the boat will float,’ Arthur said, sounding hopeless, even to himself.

‘Are you a good swimmer?’ she asked.

‘Are you?’

He gazed down at her. She rubbed her nose on her knuckles. Neither party felt inclined to answer.

Brion began micturating. Out of the blue –

The black

— and it seemed to go on for hours — this piss. Arthur suddenly found himself on the verge of a titter –

What’s wrong with me?

— he disguised it with a hiccup, and turned to stare at the deer, accusingly. It was too dark to see much, but he thought he saw the urine flowing, at an alarming rate, down onto the floor and then streaming away –

Gone

‘Just thank your lucky stars that we aren’t sitting behind him,’ Sasha murmured.

‘You’re right, Sasha,’ Arthur affirmed blankly, ‘we have so much to be grateful for.’

She peered up at him, her brows raised slightly — he could sense it — under his Gumble hat. He stared at that hat –

I’m a fool

A stooge

A cat’s paw

— and then his wrist began stinging; brought him sharply back.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m feeling…’ he cleared his throat, ‘ giddy. ’

Sasha wasn’t paying attention. She quietly shushed him, raised her hand, whispered, ‘Do you hear anything?’ gradually inching her way forward, then peering — blinking like a new-born kitten — out into the wide and unrelenting winter maw.

‘Motorway,’ Arthur tried to focus again. But he was struggling.

‘No…’

Sasha moved still further, until the snow landed softly onto the brim of her hat.

‘It’s a man,’ she said, trying to suppress her excitement, ‘carrying some kind of… of red-coloured sack… ’

On sack, Arthur moved forward himself. There was the sharp sound of something shearing. A plank fell from the roof above them. The reindeer jerked back — hit a cabinet (a drawer had tipped open behind him; its cutlery rattled, several pieces spilled out onto the floor) — the rear-end of the boat plummeted.

‘ For fuck sake HELP us! ’ Arthur bellowed. He scrabbled onto his knees and lunged for the door. Sasha had tipped sideways — then back. She lay flat on her belly, holding — for dear life — onto his right foot. She looked up at him from this new position, wearing an expression of genial bemusement.

‘ Yikes, ’ she said.

He squinted out into the snow, still panicked.

Wesley. Standing on the bank. Ruddy-faced. A dead fox slung around his neck. That same dead red fox’s tail tied — mystifyingly — onto his wrist.

‘I admire your ardour, Art,’ he yelled over, carefully lowering the fox onto the ground, ‘but I couldn’t really guarantee that vessel floating anywhere…’

‘There’s an eight-year-old girl in here,’ Arthur yelled back, and a…’ he paused (he hated this moment), ‘and a reindeer. ’

Wesley slowly straightened up. ‘How very…’ he peered past Arthur’s shoulder, ‘how extremely festive for you,’ he shouted.

‘I’m nine, ’ a small voice interrupted them.

‘Not for long, the way things are going,’ Wesley smiled at Arthur, winningly, then turned around, as if something rather more significant was taking place behind him.

Perhaps a rare breed of stork was landing on a tree-top…

Perhaps he’d dropped a glove on the path…

Perhaps…

‘We need to get out, ’ Arthur bawled, barely biting back his hysteria.

Wesley turned around again. ‘Of course you do,’ he said — at normal volume — barely audibly. He proceeded to make his way — carefully — down the mud bank. He stood at the river’s edge and peered down into the water. ‘The tide’s got a way to go yet,’ he said, ‘that’s still quite a drop.’

‘Mud,’ the voice yelled from within, ‘and some very sharp rocks.’

‘An unappealing conjunction,’ he said, nodding.

Arthur glared at him, in silence, his knuckles tightening on the doorframe.

Wes didn’t move.

A crashing sound emerged from the back of the vessel as a pot or a cup fell off a counter. ‘ Ouch, ’ the young voice intoned.

Wesley raised his eyebrows. He glanced right. Close to where he stood was a thick wooden pike, driven into the bank. A good length of rope had been tied around it. Wesley carefully unwound it while Arthur watched him. His fingers were definitely beginning to go numb. He tried to concentrate on them. He tried to bully them into clinging on.

Once he’d untied it from the pike, Wesley got as close to the craft as he possibly could. ‘Tie yourselves together with that,’ he said, ‘to be going on with.’

Arthur frowned, ‘Is that a good idea? If the boat collapses and one of us gets trapped…’

‘ Three of us,’ a voice hollered from within, ‘I’m going nowhere without my deer.’

Wesley pondered this for a moment. ‘Well here’s wishing you and your antlered companion a wonderful new life together at the bottom of the river,’ he shouted.

He threw the rope.

Arthur wasn’t ready. He missed the catch. His arms barely moved. It fell down into the water. Wesley watched the rope sink. He gazed back up at Arthur. ‘You’re off the team, buddy,’ he said, then clambered back up the bank again and wandered off.