Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘Who is she?’

‘Arthur Young’s daughter, so far as I can gather.’

‘And why does she matter?’

‘She has Cystic Fibrosis. Needs a big operation, in America.’

Josephine handed the picture back, shrugged.

‘A charming little company called Gumble Inc, manufacturers of high quality vegetarian footwear… ’ Katherine chuckled, then burped (put her hand over her mouth), ‘ Sorry. ’

Josephine was still struggling to catch up.

‘He runs the website, you prick. Arthur Young. Gumble Inc are trying to buy him out. They engineered an exclusive advertising deal with him a few months back, then quickly started throwing their weight around…’

Josephine continued to stare at her, blankly, ‘You’re saying…’ she frowned, a slow realisation gradually dawning, ‘you’re saying you think Wesley…? ’

‘Seems likely. I mean if you’re going to be Followed everywhere, then hell, why not take control of the mechanisms organising it?’ She paused. ‘Obviously it’s bound to be slightly more complicated than that…’

Josephine was shaking her head, ‘It doesn’t…’ she paused, speculatively, ‘and do you think Arthur Young knows?’

Katherine shrugged, hiccuped, ‘The ten million dollar question. But I doubt it. There’s no love lost there, that’s for certain. I get the impression that the whole Wesley thing is a labour of love with our Arthur.’

Josephine frowned.

‘Because the punchline is…’ Katherine continued, ‘and the punchline is the best thing; Arthur has no intention of selling, even though the money could buy his little girl new lungs, new kidneys and — fuck it — whatever else her messed-up nine-year-old heart wanted.’

Josephine picked up the letter again and rapidly re-read it, her eye pausing, just for a split second, on the word sisterly, the word altruism.

‘I don’t think this letter was sent to warn you off…’ she suddenly murmured, ‘I think it’s some kind of alibi.’

Katherine wasn’t buying it. ‘Who for?’

‘If something bad happens.’

‘Who to?’

‘If something bad happens, to Arthur.’

Josephine’s head was spinning. She stepped back, rubbed her hands over her face.

‘Don’t get too excited, Bean, dear,’ Katherine muttered. She lay back on her pillows and rested her hand on her stomach.

‘Have you heard from your dad lately?’ Jo suddenly asked — dropping her hands, turning and seeing a picture of him on Katherine’s dressing table, walking over to look at it.

‘Nope,’ she burped, unapologetically, ‘he remarried five years ago, has a three-year-old baby boy and is blissfully fucking happy. ’

Jo shot her a sharp look, ‘You’ll never forgive him, will you, for being almost as much of a slut as you are. That’s really what this is all about. It has nothing to do with self-sacrifice. You’re just twisting the knife, keeping us all dangling. It makes you feel powerful.’

Katherine merely sniggered at this, gazed up at the ceiling, but she wasn’t happy.

Jo walked over to the doll’s house. ‘ Christ, the white-collar Protestant hypocrisy… ’ and touched its neat roof, lightly. Katherine stiffened, visibly, as Josephine’s fingers made contact.

She turned, ‘How’s your mum?’

‘Died last year,’ Katherine’s voice was tight, ‘New Guinea. Pancreatic cancer.’

A long silence.

She suddenly gulped. At first Jo thought it was grief, but when Katherine gulped a second time, she immediately knew better. Her eye moved calmly to the glass she was holding.

‘What are you drinking?’ she asked almost tenderly.

‘Brandy.’

‘But it’s the wrong colour.’

Katherine gulped again.

Josephine strode over and took the glass from her. She sniffed it.

‘Disinfectant. How much have you had?’

Katherine shrugged, gulped again.

‘Sick it up,’ Jo ordered.

Katherine shook her head. She swallowed.

‘Okay,’ Josephine walked over to her dressing-table and picked up a china pot. It was tiny, delicate, decorated in little hand-painted daisies. She threw it against the cupboard doors. It smashed.

Katherine gaped at her. She picked up an oriental doll, snapped its neck, turned. ‘ SICK IT UP! ’ she yelled, tossing the head at her.

Katherine ducked left to avoid it. Her book fell to the floor.

Josephine walked over to the doll’s house. She flexed her fingers.

‘ No, ’ Katherine said. She gulped, then put her hand over her mouth.

‘I won’t ask you again,’ Josephine said, and bent over to pick it up.

Katherine vomited, vociferously, down onto the carpet.

‘ MORE! ’ Josephine shouted, holding the house suspended in the air, her elbows buckling under the weight of it, the furniture shifting within, the front facade creaking, threatening to fall open.

Katherine vomited again. A third time.

‘Put it…’ she tried to clear her mouth, was sick again, ‘ down. ’

‘Of course.’ Josephine nodded. She dropped the doll’s house. It landed on its corner, with a crack.

‘What a tragedy,’ she murmured, ‘now you have absolutely nothing left worth staying here for.

‘I need to borrow your bike…’ she continued, swooping down to pick up the Gumble book, shaking the sick off it, seeing the disinfectant bottle stuffed under Katherine’s counterpane. She grabbed that too, inspected the back, ‘ Jesus, 3 % non-ionic surfactants. A glass of tap water has more chemicals in it than that…’

She sniggered, ‘It’s 97 % preservative. This stuff’d probably increase your life expectancy, before it ended it…. ’

She threw the bottle down, dismissively.

Katherine’s eyes were still slowly moving from Josephine to the doll’s house (the tiny chair on the floor, the vicious crack on the front of the facade) then back.

‘Next time your self-hatred gets too overpowering,’ Josephine advised her, ‘try pure bleach. It has a little more kick… ’

Jo sprang — in a timely leap — towards the door, as Katherine exploded out of bed and scrambled, gnashing like a chained bull-terrier, across the floor.

He was suddenly calculating –

Really calculating

— although he’d never –

Very strange

— ever been even remotely mathematically-inclined at school (or since) –

Never

— but he found himself tabulating, nonetheless –

All these numbers, just spinning and squeezing and compacting and rotating… Oh Lord

— stuff about the acuteness of the angle at which he’d fallen, and the precise geometrical…

Uh

I think I hit my…

Arthur opened his eyes –

If only it wasn’t so cold — and if only I could breathe — I might con-con-consider a permanent in-in-investment in the underwater scene

He couldn’t see much –

No views

Just mud

Wood

Stuff

— but he was sharp enough to witness a violent and thoroughly unwarranted –

The bastards!

— desertion by some of his most important, his most critical formulas –

Shit

How to survive without 124/6792 +/- 453/009.8735465489?

Huh?

— saw them writhing away from him, like eels…

Come back!

And all those lovely fractions of fractions…