Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘Uh’, Ted didn’t quite know which question to answer first. They all seemed equally unappealing. Katherine scowled at his silence. She had no time for silences. She growled at him.

‘You’re confusing me,’ Ted whimpered plaintively, ‘with all these… these questions. The point is…’

‘ Tell me the point.’

Katherine took a swig of schnapps, then stamped her foot like a small, short-tempered white pony as she swallowed.

‘ Yargh. ’

Too strong.

‘I thought you’d given up drinking.’

‘And I thought you were my friend, Teddy. But you stole my mango creature. And you think I’m a cunt. Although in point of fact cunt isn’t really your thing, is it? Cushion covers are your thing. And property details. And suits. And bits of… bits of lint, and no fucking sex and Deep Heat… ’ She shrugged, resignedly, ‘… so be it.’

‘You have a new tenant,’ Ted interrupted her, ‘I got someone in for you. But not… but not… It’s just… well they got… they… they looked around this morning.’

‘Fuck off.’ Katherine flipped Ted’s tie out from under his waistcoat and blew a boozy raspberry at the cat on it. She didn’t like cats. Sylvester particularly.

‘No. I’m serious. I got you a lodger. But the problem is…’

‘Who is she?’

Katherine yanked at the tie, pulling Ted forward slightly. Ted put up a hand to straighten the tie. Katherine slapped it away. ‘That’s partly…’ he started.

‘I need a fag. Hold this.’

Katherine passed Ted the schnapps bottle, stuck the tail between her teeth and felt around inside her jacket pocket.

‘The problem is, it isn’t…’

Ted watched her, anxiously. Her mouth was full. That had to be a good thing.

‘It was Wesley. It was him. Wesley. It was all a little con… confusing.’

‘Who?’ Katherine spoke through the tail, not concentrating properly, her teeth showing prettily. ‘Who’s Wesley?’

Ted swallowed, nervously, ‘The one who wrote… the one with…’

‘ Wesley? ’ Katherine looked up, sharply, her spectral eyebrows rising dramatically. She stopped fiddling. She removed the tail from her mouth. ‘You jest, surely?’

‘Uh. No. No, I’m not joking. I wouldn’t… uh… ’

‘Shit.’

Katherine frowned. She sounded nonplussed. Her eyes slid furtively down the High Street. She glanced at the people as if she’d only just…

There were plenty of them. People she knew, mostly, doing their shopping. Coming out of the chippy. The Wimpy. The Post Office. The Wine Bar. The pub. Some she didn’t know.

She glanced at the traffic, on the road. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She straightened her hat and her silky cardigans. Then she looked up at Ted again, noticed the schnapps bottle still clutched between his fingers, grabbed it back from him, cleaned the lip with her palm, fastidiously (as if he’d been drinking from it, surreptitiously), took a quick swig, then stuck her thumb inside like a fleshy cork and held the bottle dangling loosely from her hand that way.

Ted watched on, anxiously. She swallowed and swung her hand a little. The bottle swung too. He thought she might drop it — make a mess on the pavement, outside the agency — or disconnect her thumb at the joint with the sheer weight of the bottle, maybe; pull it out of its socket.

Sure enough — four seconds later — the thumb came loose with a familiar clicking. Ted cringed. Urgh. He hated the way she did that. Her strange double-jointedness. It was just so…

‘When do I meet up with him?’ she asked.

‘Well he said he’d come to the house at around three, but I told him I’d have to…’

‘ Yeeeach. ’ She flapped her hand at him — cutting him dead — turned on her heel and walked off. Five steps later, however, she paused, spun around, pointed the tail at him, ‘And you… ’ she told him ominously, before snatching the tail back and marching off at top speed, that sour half-sentence still hanging in the cold midday air, still ringing in his head like a small pebble in a milk bottle, rolling and bouncing down a steep, cobbled hill.

Ted gently expelled a modest, acid-based burp as he tucked in his tie again and stared helplessly after her, his face a detailed study in forlorn disquietude.

One thing at least, he thought, was absolutely for certain: nobody could exit better than Miss Katherine Turpin.

It was a fourteen mile round trip, all told; a slog, a solid four hours’ worth, if he was lucky. And the weather was shitty (the sky sheeted up and promising, if not snow, then sleet), and his waterproof mac was in his back-pack, and his back-pack was hidden inside the small thicket where he’d been sleeping — a cramped, hollow, shallow indentation, but dry, and trimmed with spiky blackthorn, the lower branches still drooping (inexplicably, for so late in the season) with hard, slightly-shrunken, damson-coloured berries.

Sloes

Their fierce juice had stained his hands, his elbows, the nylon fabric of his sleeping bag. It’d seeped practically everywhere. He’d scrubbed it off, at dawn, in the river, stopping himself from gasping by cursing until his tongue was cut, finally, by his gappy teeth chattering –

Cold

Wesley glanced behind him.

In actual fact he was pretty keen to investigate the blackthorn’s holistic and nutritional potential. The sloes were edible but disgusting (he knew they flavoured gin — and wonderfully — but this didn’t say much about their dietary capabilities). He needed to consult a good herbal dictionary (in the library, perhaps — next time, maybe). He made a quick mental note of it. Slotted it away.

Fourteen miles. A solid four hours. But he still didn’t start immediately. At first he simply meandered awhile; planned ahead a little; strolled part-way down the High Street, past the Post Office, the estate agency (no one of note inside except for a short, squat, ruddy-faced creature who was sitting squarely at a desk and devouring the contents of a large jar of stuffed green olives with his stubby white fingers while appearing not in the least bit discomforted by the awful fact of having some kind of foul, ginger-skinned rodent clambering across his bleary-seeming but greed-enlivened physiognomy. This miserable creature — Wesley deduced — was none other than the fabulously bewhiskered Pathfinder).

He wandered on further, past the haberdasher’s and the grocer’s, the chip shop and the Wimpy until he stood — just fleetingly — outside Saks; a small, unpretentious, slightly dilapidated wine bar.

Inside Wesley was able to discern only two people, in total (two men, more precisely, sitting on stools in the gloom by the counter, sharing a quiet yet amicable beer together), both of whom — he stared even harder — were wearing customised shirts and caps, so probably worked there.

But he appreciated the look of this place — its scruffy, subterranean, almost saloon-like aura — and on a blackboard outside, in badly-formed lettering, he read a list of attractions including pool and darts and satellite and pub grub and music.

Wesley paused, weighed up these enticements, looked for a lunch board (couldn’t see one), carefully considered their refuse disposal procedure, frowned, cracked his knuckles, then slowly walked on again.

He instinctively strolled seawards (it was a knack he had. His Dad had been a marine. The sea was in his blood — in his bones — in his spleen. He had a salt water compass concealed deep inside of him), heading back up the Furtherwick, past Mango-stone Katherine’s, past the pale-green bungalow with the ungainly verandah (no one about currently, no man-moose, his nose glued to the shutters, no perceptible stirrings inside whatsoever).