Nicola Barker - Behindlings

She was a dreamer by instinct, by nature, by inclination; a de facto dreamer. Always had been. Dreamed so much sometimes she hardly noticed the day’s closing or the season’s passing (wore light summer dresses in winter, until the cold made her shiver). Forgot birthdays, mealtimes, hair appointments, anniversaries, all in a miasma of other-worldly hankering.

Lived in the eternal summer of dreams. A long, slow, blue-skied, green-grassed, yellow-hued, daisy-kissed, wheat-smelling, poppy-bleeding, bee-buzzing, stonechat-smacking pastureland of dreaming.

Hardly knew what she was doing — point of fact — hour by hour. Did a whole week’s shopping without even noticing, made the bed, brushed her teeth, put on her face every morning, all in a deep, sweet, haze of not-thinking. Saw real life through a mirror, covered in condensation. Blurred at its edges. Wore a cobweb coat to dinner. Sipped on nectar. Broke the worldwide record for dandelion blowing. Flew on little wings. Shared the mossy bed of the badger. Fought with the weasel. Darned and seamed her daytimes with fine-stitched patchworks of light and downy, feather-bellied imaginings.

Nothing too spectacular. Nothing wrong or weird or dirty or anything. Just all things familiar and rosy and comforting. Her dreams were as soft and clean as she was. There was nothing in them to be ashamed of. I mean there was no law against the yearn, the keen, the wish, was there? Was there?

Wesley made a sharp mental note of Eileen’s reaction. Dreamer (almost lost her back there with that cat person clap-trap. But now she was hooked. Now he could play her).

A mere four feet away, the small boy, Patty, was still carefully inspecting the constellation of spit and snot he’d just recently downloaded onto the counter-top. He was too short to lean on the counter properly. Instead he stretched himself up and over. Stood on tippy-toes, fingers grappling, coat riding up, trousers slipping down to reveal the top half of the lean cheeks of his flat-boy-buttocks. Tummy, hips, belly-button, all perkily protruding.

He was thin. Pale skinned. Unhealthy looking. He hawked expertly then swallowed noisily. He was a boy with a minor sinus problem.

Eileen peered over at him, then back at Wesley again. There was a piece of paper — just to the left of their elbows — lying on the counter: Wesley’s Library Membership Application Form. It was only partially filled in. Eileen reached out her hand for it. ‘We’ll be needing your current address,’ she said, ‘and your date of birth, obviously.’

Wesley grabbed the form and the pen he’d been using previously.

‘Do you like music?’ he asked, scribbling away diligently.

‘Music? Hmmn. Yes, I suppose I do,’ Eileen answered, idly watching the small group in the corner: the man with no shoes whom she’d seen in there earlier, and the girl, the girl with short hair.

‘I play the banjo. You should come and listen. I use the Clawhammer technique, due to my, uh…’

He lifted his right hand. Eileen’s eyes widened.

‘I’ll be playing later, about three-ish, once I’ve hiked around the Island’s perimeter. On the private fishing pier near the Gas Storage Terminal…’

He glanced up, ‘I’d love to see you there.’

He pushed the slip of paper towards her.

Under DATE OF BIRTH (Eileen focussed in on it, with a slight start), Wesley had written:

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly

Then an inch or so lower, in the margin, What is essential is invisible to the eye.

Eileen glanced up at him, perplexedly. But he was staring over towards the fiction section, at the small crowd pulling books from the shelves there. Then suddenly he was bending down to stroke the dog, then stepping back, then smiling, nodding, turning, walking, opening the door. Quick as anything. Quick as… Without even… without…

Eileen’s gaze flew to the section marked ADDRESS and it was then that her half-quizzical-smile froze; c/o, it said, c/o Ms Katherine Turpin, followed by a horribly familiar Furtherwick Road number.

Ms Katherine…

What?

The smile remained stuck; stiff at its corners.

Patty cleared his throat. Then he cleared it again, even louder. Eileen put down the form, her expression smeared with joy and fear, hope and hunger.

‘I want to join this library,’ the small boy said (he was a simple boy and Eileen’s Otherwiseness meant nothing to him), ‘but I’m rubbish at writing things.’

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,

What is essential is invisible to the eye

The Little Prince. Antoine De Saint-Exupéry. Her favourite book, her favourite writer, her favourite person in the whole wide world, ever ever ever.

Eileen deftly slid Wesley’s slip under the counter — her face still a casualty ward of mixed emotions — then turned towards the child and asked if she could help him. As she listened dutifully to his answer, she dazedly twisted her wedding band on her neatly-painted finger; her soft, sweet, lavender eyes slowly clouding over.

Hmmmmn

Dewi chewed solemnly on a heavily-salted tomato sandwich as he peered through his living room window, his dust-iced skin zebraed by the sharp stripes of winter light which gushed, unapologetically — like hordes of white-frocked debutantes flashing their foaming silk petticoats in eager curtsies — between the regimented slats of his hand-built shutters.

He chewed methodically, his muscular jowls working — deliberately, repetitively — his dark eyes staring out, unblinking. He was waiting for Katherine. But he was thinking about Wesley. Wesley.

Wesley ‘the joker’. Isn’t that what they called him? Or Wesley ‘the wild card’. Or Wesley… Wesley ‘the maverick ’ (that was a popular one, just currently). But there were others, too, and plenty of them: ‘The Scholarly Beadle’ (a pretty pitiful soubriquet, all things considered), ‘The Post-Millennial Prankster’ (and people actually got paid to write this crap?).

Wesley.

Dewi stopped chewing. He swallowed, slightly prematurely, experiencing some difficulty; gulping. He sniffed. He swallowed again, then picked a tomato pip from his molar with his finger. The pip was dislodged. He bit down hard upon it. He crushed it.

But weren’t these people — these mild-mannered commentators, these hacks, these pen-pushers, these thoroughly indulgent, head-shaking, lip-biting, gently tutting people, these mollycoddlers to a man — weren’t they all forgetting something? Something important?

Weren’t they forgetting — I mean he didn’t want to piss on their fucking chips or anything — but weren’t they forgetting the damage? Yes. As blunt as that. Plain as that. Boring as that: The damage — The devastation — The pain — The destruction.

(Tedious truths, Dewi was the first to acknowledge — truths invariably were, weren’t they? — but truths just the same. Indubitably.)

Caught up — as they obviously were — in all the fun of it (the waggishness, the roguery), couldn’t they at least show a pretence of concern over the possibility that they might, in some small way, be in serious danger of overlooking the crucial, the more salient, the rather less salubrious issues?

Wesley the Heartless. That was more like it. Just the kind of monicker he was really crying out for (didn’t it at least mean something?), or Wesley the Careless. Wesley the Killer (so much more fitting than the Beadle thing). Or Wesley the Bastard (Hell yes. Even better).