Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘Will you say anything, Doc?’ the fourth man asked, gazing over towards Patty bemusedly. ‘He’s absolutely trashing that hydrangea.’

Doc shrugged, ‘Not my responsibility, Hooch. I’m hardly the boy’s keeper.’

The two of them dumbly ruminated upon Patty’s continuing antics for a while, before, ‘Ay ay! ’ the fourth man whispered, clumsily adjusting his glasses on the flat, elongated (almost turtlelike) bridge of his snout and squinting furtively across Doc’s right shoulder blade. ‘It looks like somebody else might be squaring up to take the initiative.’

As he spoke he yanked off his rucksack and shoved his hand deep inside of it. He withdrew a pad and a pen.

The enterprising person to whom Hooch referred had silently emerged from the small, rather scruffy-looking mint-green bungalow behind them. He was a man; stem-seeming, handsome, sallow-skinned. A big, brazen creature. Wide-jawed. Gargantuan. A moose.

As they watched, he emerged fully into the sharp morning light, squinting antagonistically into the high winter sky like some kind of hostile, nocturnal organism, turned and slammed his front door (it clicked shut, then immediately swung back open) clumped rapidly over his large, well-constructed American-style verandah, banged down some thick, wooden steps, marched across his wildly Amazonian front garden, out through his gate (again, although he closed it with a satisfying clatter, only seconds later it was yawning insolently behind him), strode along the pavement — passing literally within inches of the three of them — and dashed straight over the road, narrowly avoiding a scooter and a small, battered yellow Volkswagen (the Volkswagen swerving and sounding its horn) without so much as a word, a squeak, a grunt of acknowledgement.

As he moved, Jo noted, a spray of something chalk-like — a fine, dusty aura — seemed to follow in his wake. When she looked harder, she noticed that he wore ancient trousers and a threadbare jumper, both of which were saturated with a diffuse, pale, powdery substance. Flour? She frowned. No. Not white enough. Grit? Nope. Something infinitely lighter. She sniffed the air, cat-like, after his passing. Ah. That was it. Sawdust.

The man-moose, meanwhile, was entering the bungalow’s garden. He was marching across the brick parquet. He was grabbing Patty by the arm. He was towering above him.

Jo drew a deep, gulping breath — as if she’d just been shoved from a mile-high diving board — then gazed down at her shoes, slowly exhaling. Birkenstocks. Brown plastic leather-look. Square-toed. Lace-ups. Cruelty-free.

She found herself inspecting the heel of her left shoe (abstractly observing how the tread was far more worn on the right hand side), while simultaneously straining her two sharp ears for any vaguely audible scraps of conversation.

What could he possibly be saying?

Initially a couple more cars passed by, drowning out everything, and then — damn him, what timing — Doc started talking.

‘Well that’s certainly gone and done it,’ he murmured, turning to Hooch conspiratorially. ‘Happen to know whose house that is?’

Doc’s voice, Jo felt (perhaps even for her benefit), was slightly louder than it had been previously.

‘I don’t know,’ Hooch answered, staring wide-eyed at his mentor, opening his pad and priming his pen in sweet anticipation. ‘Should I, Doc?’

Jo silently noted the obsequious way in which Hooch repeatedly used the Old Man’s name in conversation.

‘Katherine. Katherine Turpin. Remember her?’

Doc pronounced this feminine appellation only seconds before the huge, dusty, moose-like man echoed the self-same three syllables himself during the course of his own conversation.

Jo glanced up from her shoes.

‘Katherine who?’ Hooch quizzed.

‘Katherine Turpin. ’

‘Turpin?’

‘As in Dick, ’ Doc said.

‘It rings a bell, Doc,’ Hooch muttered, glancing sideways at Jo for the first time, as if supremely protective of the information he was gleaning. He suddenly lowered his voice, presumably hoping to encourage Doc to do the same, ‘And the connection?’

‘The walks book,’ Doc announced, sounding justly proud of his coup, ‘the section on Canvey. All that crazy stuff about boundaries. I never understood a word of it…’ he chuckled, ‘nor did Wes himself, more than likely. But this is where she lives. That much I am sure of.’

Hooch chewed on the end of his finger for a moment, frowning, then suddenly his monolithic mien brightened. ‘Of course, ’ he squeaked, jabbing his biro into the air with a quite savage delight, ‘of course of course. You mean Katherine. You mean the Katherine Turpin. What on earth was I thinking? You mean Katherine the whore… ’

Hooch proclaimed this slanderous defamation with all the uninhibited joy of a miserly man who unexpectedly finds his long-lost gold cap tucked inside a three-week-old carton of pasta salad.

‘ Sssh! ’

Even Doc had the good grace to seem embarrassed by Hooch’s complete want of delicacy. Dewi and the kid were currently well within earshot, standing on the opposite kerb, impatiently waiting for a van to pass. He scowled, quickly pushing his pager into his coat pocket — as if to free his hands for something (combat, possibly) — but then held them limply by his sides, open, loose.

They crossed the road. Dewi roughly yanked Patty up onto the grass verge in front of them. ‘Is the boy with you?’ he asked Doc, proffering the child, who dangled as weakly in Dewi’s huge grip as a faded old bathrobe on a big, brass doorknob.

‘The boy? Mine? Good Lord, no,’ Doc exclaimed, lifting his hands and smiling as if this was possibly the most preposterous supposition he had ever yet been party to.

The boy, his?

Patty stared up at Doc, unblinking, his head yanked sideways by Dewi’s tight grip. He was just a boy. He had no agenda. There was nothing unspoken or sly or resentful in his gaze. But even so, almost out of nowhere, Doc’s smile suddenly faltered. His hands froze, mid-air. His lips twisted. Because he had indeed been the father of a son, once.

A father. This strangely alien yet acutely painful notion hit him like a karate kick. Two kicks. In the kidneys. It winded him. How on earth could he have forgotten? Even passingly. His own flesh and blood, his boy, dead. A too short life, curtailed, emptied, drained, exhausted…

Doc’s loose hands clenched, just briefly, as if he was seriously considering doing something wild and magnificent — venting his rage. Perhaps calling death or fate or destiny to task. Going five rounds with the bastards. Pulping them — but then they unclenched again and hung inertly.

Dewi didn’t notice Doc’s distress. It was all much too subtle. He was far too irritable. He turned to Jo. ‘What about you?’ he asked, then paused for a moment to inspect her face more closely. He had mistaken her for a boy, possibly a brother. But she was a girl, and as if to prove it categorically, a fierce blush — like two clumsily upended measures of sweet cherry brandy — slowly stained the impeccable cream cotton tablecloth of her soft complexion.

Jo shrugged, burning inside, burning outside, utterly mortified, yet still silently mesmerised by the layers of dust which — close up — coated Dewi’s features and hung above either eyebrow like precarious hunks of soft, pale honeycomb.

‘Why should the kid belong to anybody?’ Hooch butted in — observing Doc’s temporary state of disquiet and feeling bad for him. ‘Why can’t he simply be here under his own steam?’