Nicola Barker - Behindlings

She was tired –

Tired

He was still shivering, although he’d had a warm bath and was wearing her father’s old clothes — wearing them exceptionally well, as it transpired (every item but the shoes fitting perfectly).

His arm had been bandaged by the mobile doctor. She idly recalled the Bean girl having a bandaged arm, earlier (the right arm). She presumed it was some kind of Wesley-based phenomena — that these were copy-cat injuries; imitative woundings of a sympathetic nature. She loved this idea. She was sick. It amused her.

‘I don’t really know why I’m…’ Arthur glanced around the kitchen. Everything seemed — if possible — even more sordid than when he’d been there the night before, ‘ imposing on you like this…’

He rubbed his hair. It was lank and soft thanks to the tiny splash of geranium oil she’d applied to his bathwater.

‘A warm berth,’ she gave him a salacious look. Didn’t quite pull it off, ‘ bath, ’ she adjusted, hiccuped.

Blinked –

Pine

She filled the kettle. Arthur walked over to inspect her chinchilla.

‘Was the girl alright in the end, though,’ Katherine asked, ‘the daughter?’

He nodded, ‘As well as can be expected. It was all slightly…’ he sniffed, ‘traumatic.’

‘Was she sweet?’

‘Very. Hard-nosed. Funny.’

‘Was she like him?’

Arthur frowned, scratched his head again, slowly, ‘Yes. Yes. I suppose she was, really.’

Katherine plugged the kettle in, turned it on. ‘And what’ll happen to her now?’

‘The mother’s been called back from her honeymoon in… in…’ he grimaced, ‘and is driving down to fetch her.’

‘ Wow, ’ Katherine sighed, as if delighted — by proxy — at the trouble Sasha had caused everyone.

Arthur cautiously pushed his index finger through the bars of Bron’s cage. Bron froze and stared pointedly at the finger, his whiskers vibrating crazily.

‘Does the rodent have a name?’ he asked.

‘Bron.’

‘Really? What’s the background on that?’

‘ The Tomorrow People. Bron is a magical creature who possesses the special gift of transforming himself into the one thing each person most loves.’

‘Ah.’

Arthur stared at the rodent, unlovingly.

He suddenly felt… was feeling…

What was it?

Empty?

Bereft?

Ever since…

‘And the deer?’ she asked.

He turned and stared at her, intently. Surely she must be feeling it too? He hunted for the signs. Longed for them. Saw none.

‘Tough as old boots,’ he eventually murmured.

Katherine nodded sagely, ‘That’s why Santa favours them over the motor scooter.’

He didn’t react. He was inspecting her boiler suit. The poppers. The length of the arms. The traces of sick down the front.

‘So what will you do now?’ she asked, slightly disconcerted by the attention he was paying her (she didn’t remember asking for it, but attention — she supposed — was always rather like that).

He shrugged, ‘Haven’t decided yet,’ then smiled. ‘I thought about you,’ he said thickly, ‘all night long, in the dark.’

She scratched her chin, uneasily. She didn’t believe him for a second.

‘But I don’t know anything about you…’ he continued.

‘Apart from…’ she interrupted, widening her eyes, ‘the obvious, obviously.’ He nodded but looked vacant.

‘The fold-up bike,’ he suddenly said, as though snatching this abiding image straight from the ether.

‘Yes.’

‘And the sex.’

She picked up a couple of mugs from the work-surface, turned her back on him.

‘So you work locally?’ he asked.

She rinsed the mugs in the sink, her mouth tightening at its corners. ‘I do.’

She faced him again, her countenance scrubbed clean. ‘I sprout beans for a living.’

‘Really?’

He struggled to concentrate. He was remembering…

That gas canister

That cold water

‘Yes. Mung, aduki, alfalfa…’

They stared at each other.

‘Lentils, chick peas…’

The kettle boiled, clicked, sighed.

It started to rain again outside.

The chinchilla yawned.

Her stomach rumbled –

The sheer…

The infernal…

The unbelievable mundanity of it all…

‘I can spare you thirty quid,’ she said briskly, ‘and a coat, and a hat too, if you have need of it.’

They crouched quietly under the flyover in the comforting semi-darkness, hoping — waiting — for those tragically orphaned cubs to make an appearance. He wrapped his arm around her. And when it grew too cold, she borrowed his jacket, inspected the seam-work, and even in the half-light, saw that it was perfect.

‘You’re fantastic, Ted,’ she said.

And he nodded. Because he believed her. Because he knew it.

He needed to walk it off –

Just to walk

— but his shoes weren’t right — a fraction too loose — so he stopped off at Saks to pick up a tissue or something –

A napkin

— to shove down the back. He took the money Katherine had given him out of her father’s old tweed coat pocket.

This is a new lease of life, he thought, I am re-invented. There are things that I don’t need to understand or regret or explain any more.

Because I am over it, I am…

I am…

But the words wouldn’t come.

To fill up this temporary mental vacuum — this space — this confusion — he walked over to the counter –

The sound of my own feet

What a blessing

— and when he arrived there, he ordered a vodka.

Once the money’d run out, he produced his own wallet, opened it, pulled out Dewi’s wet notes, the damp picture of his kid, propped her up against an empty glass, toasted Dewi, toasted Sasha, toasted Katherine, toasted… toasted…

God this took some doing

— toasted Wesley –

And that fucking gas canister

— toasted himself, toasted her… until his arm couldn’t toast anyone

— not anyone — anymore.

‘What did you forget now? ’ she asked, in a tone which implied that he’d have forgotten his own hair if it hadn’t been well-rooted.

‘I forgot you,’ Dewi said grimly, ‘go and get the chinchilla and we’ll be off.’

She shrugged, went through to the kitchen, brought the chinchilla cage back with her. He took it, held it primly aloft.

‘Good.’ His tone was crisp.

‘I suppose I’ll need a change of underwear,’ she ruminated. Her voice was uncertain — as if only half of her was involved in the current transaction; the less contentious part (the troubled side was off on sabbatical; perhaps swearing at a kindly nun, or giving hand relief to a total stranger with not-quite-clean-enough teeth in a not-quite-deserted-enough railway compartment somewhere).

‘No.’

He opened the front door, drew a deep breath, and gravely made his peace with this other, rather more rambunctious, rather less appealing, absent part; ‘Katherine Turpin I like … I accept … I love your stink,’ he told her.

She caught up with him on the hard shoulder. The boy — the oldest son from the house — was still walking alongside him, accompanied by his grizzled but genial stiff-limbed brown labrador.

The boy’s name was Peter. He was fifteen. He wanted to be an astronaut (way off, though; way off in the future). He was exceptionally athletic; currently Canvey Athletics Team’s 100 metre champion (and a mean hurdler, a good walker — a keen hiker, he told Wesley) but scientific, too; had attained the top grades in his year for physics, maths, biology, chemistry…