Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘Sod off. ’

He actually seemed to find this funny. ‘Hooch, then?’

The boy grinned then took a step closer to Jo, ‘You see that’s not what I’m in it for. Not short change. That won’t satisfy me.’

‘You’re in it for the competition, then, is that it?’ The boy shrugged. ‘Or for the Following?’

He didn’t even credit Jo’s second guess with a reaction.

‘I’m not clever or nothing,’ he told her, fiddling around inside his pockets as he spoke, ‘but I do like puzzles. I’ve always been good with them. Crosswords in the papers and in books, and wordsearch. And I like working out stuff. And I watch stuff. And I keep my ears open…’ he smiled at Jo, ‘in actual fact I saw you in the library…’

‘What do you mean?’ Jo stiffened.

‘I saw you read something in that book you had. Your cheeks went all red. I saw that. And then you kicked over the chair just after. On purpose.’

‘To help you,’ Jo interjected.

The boy snorted, derisively, ‘To help yourself more like it.’

He withdrew the piece of paper from his pocket. White. Neatly folded. He dangled it in front of her, taunting her with it. Then he screwed it up, smirking, and threw it at her feet, his slate grey eyes mocking her, almost goading her to scrabble for it.

The three others, Jo noticed, were now all looking their way.

‘What you need,’ the boy spoke softly, ‘isn’t written on there. What you need is in here,’ he tapped the side of his head, ‘and if you want some of it, then I suggest you leave the others, leave him,’ he tipped his head towards Wesley, in the far distance, rapidly disappearing, ‘and follow me.’

‘Where are you going?’ Jo asked — Wesley was moving left, tight left, out of vision — she felt almost (was it panic?) at the thought of losing sight of him. But this was a challenge from the boy, wasn’t it? It might prove foolish to deny him. And she was thirsty, dammit, and her feet were aching.

The others were silently heading back, like three strange birds, like vultures, fully intent upon feasting on the boy’s dropped bounty.

And Jo wanted it. She wanted it.

(What had he written to the librarian? Was it rubbish? Was it poetry? Was it a clue? Would it incriminate him? Would it exonerate him? Why did she care? Why did she?)

‘I’m going for a Coke, Josephine,’ the boy half-turned and spoke cheekily over his bony shoulder, ‘and for a very quick wee-wee. Do you think you might possibly be coming along with me?’

What was it with this walk? It was definitely sneaky. Initially unremarkable — everything muddied-right-up or wrung-right-out, or plain and grey and horizontal — but then it gradually snuck up on you (furtively, stealthily), tapped you softly on the shoulder (made you twist, made you stagger) stared you full in the face (without tact, without graciousness, without the slightest modicum of bloody courtesy) and blew the world’s fattest, wettest and most unrepentant raspberry.

It was aberrant. It was… it was deviant. And worst of all — worst, worst, worst of all — it was time-warped. Seriously.

The hours just melted. That, or they simply elongated. They kicked out their legs, picked their noses and yawned, rudely, like a clutch of hearty schoolboys in double chemistry.

The minutes? Like sneezes. Or tiny kisses on the nape. Or flea bites. Or buzzing black midges. Urgent, sometimes, like the industrial snarl of the greenfinch, or the shamelessly arable, silver-muddied, plough-bladed tssweee! of the tiny warbler, hiding-and-seeking it in the blonde reeds of summer.

Ah, summer.

Wesley shuddered. Three-thirty and the sky was already nagging its way peevishly towards a tight and grey and implacable evening. Icy cold. Danker, now. The fog still gliding in and out — like a suspicious moorhen treading water with its prodigious pale toes on a busy river. Now you see him…

Gone.

The seconds drowned at high tide; grabbing for him; lunging at him, gasping, or they shivered disconsolately at low tide, barely acknowledging him before turning tail and slinking off, sullenly. Or both. Or either. They lapped reassuringly. Close upon him — far away. They were full of sense and inclination, but utterly devoid of weight or meaning.

This was surely the best kind of walking. He’d done it several times now — the span of the whole damn island — it was his job to keep circling (claws held tight, tucked in, like a vulture, a hawk, a raven; riding the ill-tuned, honk and parp of those choppy church-organ thermals — up, up, up, up…

down

— looking for weakness, stretching his wings, being irrepressibly keen, endlessly curious, revoltingly beady).

There was still plenty here to preoccupy him. Familiarity breeding (not contempt. No. He was never contemptuous. Contempt was just another kind of weakness) more familiarity.

There was the dump — which he loved — the Stonehenge of slag and scrap, the Babylon of debris. The smell, even in winter, was really quite heady. Rich and sweet with both form and integrity. In fact if stink were audible (Wesley conceptualised, idly) then it would be a lactating vixen, its foot caught and tearing in a steel-sprung trap. It would be a howl, but keening. A scream, only rounder.

He’d taken too long, but he’d indulged himself a little. Couldn’t help it. Pretended he was hiking in the American Delta (he’d never been to America, but he felt its expanses locked up inside of him — wrapped-up tight with string and paper, bruised by a plethora of airmail stickers — in a thousand different illusory sense-memories.

He’d smelled it. He’d read it. He’d felt the parch and the gust of it. He’d eaten key-lime pie, drunk bourbon and communed with the bison. He’d headed Westward, crossing frontiers, smashing stuff up willy-nilly, scything, apportioning, opening, appropriating, but in his belly, in his crop; internally, mentally, bacterially).

When the sea wall finally toughened up and became concrete, he’d sprung up onto it, like an acrobat alighting — following a sprint, a bounce, a minutely-timed flick-flack — on the back of a cantering pony. He liked to indulge his childish whims. He liked to reel and totter on walls, precariously.

One step, two steps, taking it slow, taking it easy, finding his buzzing brain briefly — and blissfully — sedated by the careful regularity of one foot then the other, one foot then… He paused for a second, looked up, just quickly, to locate his wider bearings, and then –

WOW!

— he started (wobbled) and clutched at the air with his hands… Because suddenly he was wantonly jolted, he was upper-cut, he was hijacked by a huge, brash, bulbous shimmering edifice. Lights starting to blink and twinkle as the sun finally ducked and staggered — pissed and bloodshot — behind the sea.

The Oil Refinery. Ahhh. Wesley stood straight on the wall, shoulders dragged back by his rucksack, appraising it thoughtfully. He was bewitched by its humming and its clatter — all that convoluted metal glittering back at him, so… so imperturbably. All that industry.

His glance lowered. He admired the muted swathe of seabirds on the remaining patches of mudflat, paddling, contentedly — winter-throated and dozy — between him and this… this kinky, tortile, flexular… this… this big, sexy silver thing. This swirling, Byzantine monstrosity. This beauty.

Hmmn. Wesley bent his knees. Then stretched. The joints ached. He was tiring.