Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘Sawdust,’ he exclaimed, ‘ bah! ’

‘Bless you,’ Hooch murmured, quickly withdrawing a paper tissue from his pocket, patting his mouth with it and then carefully inspecting his pristine anorak for any stray remnants of damp residue.

Doc, meanwhile — after swiftly yanking a meandering Dennis to heel — formally introduced Jo to the rest of the party. ‘This is Jo, everybody,’ he said, ‘and I’m Doc obviously, he’s Hooch, that’s Patty, and this here is Shoes.’

Jo nodded at Shoes, then instinctively glanced down at his feet. They were bare — filthy — his toenails the approximate length and shade of ten rooks’ beaks. Dennis, for one, seemed absolutely riveted by them.

‘Shoes here is very clever with his feet,’ Doc explained, following the direction of Jo’s gaze, ‘he can use them like hands if he chooses. He can even hold a pen with them.’

‘I can eat a meal with them,’ Shoes volunteered, ‘I have double-jointed knees.’

Shoes was a fat Geordie hippie in his forties.

‘That’d be a great bonus,’ Jo smiled, ‘if for some reason you needed to write a letter and eat a meal, concurrently.’

‘I must confess, I never yet tried it,’ Shoes replied, blinking uneasily, ‘but I suppose it’s always an option.’

‘ Concurrently, ’ Hooch parroted, under his breath, feeling blindly again for the pad in his pocket.

‘He can’t write,’ Patty interrupted scornfully, ‘even with his…’

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Doc spoke simultaneously, moving in a few steps closer to Jo and pulling out his pager, ‘perhaps you might go over the details of what just went on back there — between you and Wesley — for the benefit of the rest of the group.’

The rest of the group?

Jo glanced around, unsure whether to be delighted or disturbed by her sudden inclusion. She scratched her head, nervously, ‘I can’t recall… I mean not exactly — not word for word… but he seemed… Wesley seemed to have acquired the impression from somewhere that I was being… that I was actually being paid to follow him.’

‘And are you?’ Hooch asked, his pad open, his pen raised.

Jo looked startled, ‘Paid? Who would pay me to follow Wesley?’

‘The same person, probably,’ Patty speculated mischievously, ‘as pays Doc to follow him.’

‘Shut up,’ Doc spoke softly.

Patty wasn’t quelled, though. ‘I’ve seen Wesley in the library,’ he expanded nonchalantly, ‘and he doesn’t do nothing special with maps or globes or computers… Mostly all he ever does is sleep or read stupid cowboy books with bloody great letters…’

‘Large type,’ Hooch corrected, ‘he’s a lazy reader, but his vision is infallible.’

‘How can you tell?’ Jo asked.

‘By watching. He favours…’ Hooch licked his thumb and quickly paged back through his jotter, ‘he likes J.T. Edson and Louis L’Amour. He finds them relaxing. But he reads plenty of other stuff. Only last week it was…’ he inspected the jotter again, ‘ The World Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Murder by J.R. Nash, and some big old tome by Thomas Paine — the philosopher — and then…’ he flipped the page over, ‘… something called Orientalism by…’ he coughed, ‘… by a Mr Edward W. Said.’

‘Louis L’Amour? ’ Jo echoed, apparently bewildered by this sudden barrage of information.

‘You didn’t actually say yet,’ Doc continued tenaciously, ‘whether you are being paid to follow him.’

‘She did say she came from Southend,’ Patty interrupted, ‘I heard that much.’

‘Do you come from Southend?’ Hooch asked, already writing.

‘No… Yes… ’ she struggled with her answer for a moment, ‘I was from Canvey itself, originally.’

‘Almost local,’ Shoes sucked on his tongue, ‘you messed up, man. You messed up badly. ’

‘Messed up?’ Jo frowned. ‘You think I messed up?’

Shoes turned to Doc, ‘I’d’ve played the local card, Doc. I’d’ve merged into the background — like the estate agent — and got taken into his confidence that way.’

‘You think I messed up?’ Jo repeated, rather more emphatically.

‘Of course you messed up,’ Patty snorted, jumping off the pavement, into the road, then back onto the pavement again.

‘Why?’

‘Because he hates being Followed,’ Doc interjected, smiling (as if the thought of Jo messing up was somehow completely irresistible to him), ‘and he never speaks to the people Following. That’s the whole point. It’s the rule. We are the Behindlings. Wesley actually coined our name as a kind of swearword, as an insult, but we don’t treat it that way; we quite like it. It unites us. It…’

‘It legitimises us,’ Hooch interrupted.

The others all nodded in unison at this, but Jo was still frowning, so Doc expanded further, ‘Wesley thinks you have to be backward to follow things. I’m talking organised religion, football teams, brand names. Anything at all. He’s a free spirit. People call him an anarchist — in the papers and so forth — but he despises labels; even that one…’

‘ Especially that one,’ Shoes butted in, before instinctively tipping his head towards Doc and drawing a couple of steps back again.

‘The funny part about it,’ Doc continued, ‘is that people are drawn to him. They can’t help themselves. They like what he stands for — although he constantly bangs on about not standing for anything. And he has this strange way about him — a kind of simple charm — an innocence. Add to that all the pranks, the trickery, the mischief-making… and not forgetting the confectionery Loiter…’ Doc paused, ‘Wesley’s an angry man, make no mistake about it. We’ve all felt the brunt of it in one way or another.’

Hooch grunted, gently, under his breath, as if this comment had an especial significance for him, personally. Shoes just sighed, tellingly.

‘He’s high-minded and he’s unpredictable, and most important of all: he’s a trouble-maker, and trouble-makers value their privacy. So he resents our eyes. We irritate him. In point of fact,’ Doc grinned widely, ‘he loathes the watching.’

‘Poor Wesley’s hiding from the truth,’ Shoes interrupted.

The others all looked askance at this.

‘What truth?’ Jo indulged him.

‘The truth that he needs Following. Because — let’s face it — he is the very thing he’s so set upon despising. At root he’s the contradiction. He’s the puzzle. That’s what nobody understands. But we do…’ Shoes looked around him, detecting scant support in the others’ faces. ‘Well I do,’ he qualified.

‘Shoes is very philosophical,’ Doc sighed, ‘but no good at deciphering things. And terrible with maps. So we all try and help him out, time allowing.’

‘I do tend to go my own way, intellectually,’ Shoes averred.

Patty — who’d finished his doughnut several minutes previously — now made a meal out of scrunching up the paper bag and drop-kicking it towards the hippie. It hit Shoes squarely on the thigh. Shoes’ wide face rippled piously, then he stretched out his left foot, picked up the bag with his toes and tossed it straight back to him. ‘Put it in a bin, lad,’ he said.

‘ Aw, fuck it man!’ Patty exclaimed, full of bravado, but he took the bag and shoved it hard into his jacket pocket.

‘Wesley also said,’ Hooch told Doc, inspecting his notebook again, ‘that she wouldn’t find what she was looking for here. ’

There was a pause. Hooch eyed Jo closely, ‘What are you looking for, exactly?’