Nicola Barker - Behindlings

To steal a pond.

To steal an antique pond.

Now that was truly something.

There’s lamb and lynx and lion,

Yet no fowl and no fish, either,

Left on my terra firma.

So wait awhile —

Malinger —

And if you stay a loser,

Then plant your feet firmly on Daniel’s Candy

To find a pill that’s sweeter still,

A sugar far more bitter

Suddenly…

Huh-huh

HAH!

… having a little trouble…

Huh-huh

HAH!

… inhaling…

Huh-huh

Tired.

HAH!

Huh-huh

He was tiring. Had to regulate his…

HAH!

… breathing…

Huh-huh

Slow things down…

HAH!

… a little…

Almost always happened…

Huh-huh

… five hours…

Huh-huh

… in…

HAH!

Arthur checked his watch. Four and three…

Huh-huh

… quarters…

HAH!

Approximately.

Huh-huh

He checked it again. Four…

Huh-huh

… hours fifty…

HAH!

Precisely. There you go. Just as he’d predicted. Five hours. Only ten…

Huh-huh

… minutes…

Huh-huh

… under. Not bad going. Simply had to regulate…

Huh-huh

Had to focus. Had to stop pushing. Just…

HAH!

… cruise…

Huh-huh

… awhile. Just cruise. Just…

Okay.

Okay

Yes.

HAH!

And…

Phew!

… better.

Candy Island? Jeeeesus! (Pulse was racing. Chest pumping.

Heart banging like… heart throbbing like… fragile-pink-shuddering-hairless-newborn-rodent… Stop! … rat… Stop!.. fieldmouse… Stop — HAH! — thinking!)

Huh-huh

Candy? What the heck was that all about, anyway? Yes he knew it was a nod to Defoe (Arthur hawked, then expertly spat the dense yet compact globule over his shoulder) but the actual meaning of the reference…

Huh-huh

… as Defoe used it, originally?

Of course — and this was the worst part — Wesley himself probably didn’t have the first…

HAH!

… idea about the phrase’s basic etymology. He was so damn slap-happy, so relentlessly superficial. A cunning magpie. A stinking plagiariser. And so determinedly cheerful about it. Such a blissful bloody…

HAH!

… philistine.

Arthur bent down abruptly to tighten one of his shoelaces — so abruptly, in fact, that the weight of his rucksack almost toppled him. He quickly stiffened his legs, his thighs, stretched out his arms; palms pushed forward — grumbling furiously — rapidly re-located his centre of gravity, tapped the ground lightly with his fingertips — just to make certain — then yanked hard at the lace and firmly re-tied it.

Wasn’t the poor — Huh-huh — lace’s fault, was it!

Defoe? A preposterous seventeenth century opportunist, a loose cannon, an incorrigible hypocrite. And that — let’s face it — was putting it politely.

Candy.

Candy…

Arthur stood up. His face glistening. He grimaced. He re-adjusted his back-pack. He walked on again.

Presumably there was some vague historical connection with the sugar industry, but in truth he was pretty uncertain as to the finer details. I mean wasn’t everybody? He was fairly sure, though, that Defoe hadn’t ever been explicit about the origin of this phrase in his copious writings, or its actual…

Phew! Deep breaths. Deep, deep… One-two. One-two. Yes. That was better. That was…

… meaning. And if it had another source — Shakespeare? Chaucer? Dick bloody Francis? — Arthur was buggered if he knew what it might be. He was a specialist, dammit. A Specialist. He was the first to admit it, and proudly. Not for him the comprehensive route, the broad-based background in everything from the novels of Jane Austen to the origins of world debt to the nesting habits of the black-headed gull (Arthur Young, a Generalist? Never!).

Arthur Young was partial, he was a pundit, a boffin, a connoisseur. He was — and there was nothing wrong in it, either — he was… he was particular.

There

(But hang on a second. Hang on a minute. Because… because wasn’t this his area? The seventeenth century? Farming methods. Livestock quotas. The consequences of enclosure. All the rest of that miserable, desiccated, dry-as-a-bone malarkey? Wasn’t this his speciality? Wasn’t…? Ah, fuck it. Fuck…)

Something was very wrong here.

One-two. One-two.

Shetland ponies

Hah!

Industrial landmarks

Hah!

Machinery dating back to the industrial revolution

Hah!

Walking. Walking. Walking.

HAH!

Just the same (so put this in your ruddy pipe and smoke it), he’d painstakingly re-scrutinized the relevant chapters of the book in question the previous evening (Defoe’s excessively lauded A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain) for any other direct reference to Canvey, just in case something tiny might’ve slipped his mind. But it hadn’t. HAH!

It hadn’t. Thankfully. So he took the phrase to be a topical seventeenth century reference, something throw-away, incidental, insignificant…

Left knee was creaking a little. There was a lesson in that, wasn’t there! Yup. Shouldn’t have bent over so violently.

He did know, though, from what little he’d retained from his own long distant researches — and not forgetting those of his esteemed relative; his great, great, great… how many greats was it? Six? Seven? Sod it — that they’d farmed sheep on the island, originally. The fat-tailed variety.

And they’d made special, extremely strong, exceedingly coarse, border-line-loathsome cheeses. From goat’s milk. Sent them, posthaste, to the London slums. Corroded their mean and impoverished palates with them.

Anything else? He struggled to remember. He’d last walked this route way back — way, way back — in 1973. A long time ago now. He calculated the numbers. Good God. As long ago as that? His thin lips tightened. His shoulders hunched-up, dispiritedly.

1973. A world away. They’d still had a swing bridge then — to gain access…

The swing bridge!

Ah yes. He remembered it. And he also remembered — that very same instant — a rather scraggy, slightly worthy, ludicrously keen, ridiculously independent, squeaky-clean, still, still, still just-teenage Arthur (remember?), precocious as a kitten. Square as… well, square. Eyes like a leveret. Wide. Round. Credulous.

He’d been a babe in bloody arms! Fresh as a peach. Prickling with idealism. Literally prickling…

Left turn now. Left turn. Shoulders back. Head up. Keep deep… Keep breathing

Before then — the 1930s, was it? When the bridge was built? (This date stuck in his mind for some inexplicable reason) — they’d used rowing boats. And you could walk over, if you were careful, at low tide. There were stepping stones (and casualties).