Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Jo frowned. ‘I’m not…’ she re-read the information on the back, one last time, ‘in all honesty, Patty, I don’t really know. But in terms of the general thrust of the thing,’ she took another sip of her tea, ‘what I’m actually feeling here is more… it’s much more of an… an atmosphere than anything.’

She glanced over at him. Patty’s expression was uncomprehending. He was fast losing patience. ‘I don’t give a shit about atmospheres,’ he growled, ‘I only want to know its meaning. ’ He split his syllables, menacingly.

‘But that is what it means, because…’ Jo battled to explain it, ‘because, well, in effect, what Wesley’s saying here is that the great philosopher — uh… Ludwig Witt… Wittgen…’ she struggled, briefly, with her pronunciation, ‘Wittgenstein was actually a bit of a wag — see? Ludwig-Ludwag — and a wag means a joker. Now that’s relevant to Wesley because he’s a famous practical joker himself — or that’s how people see him — but he’s sort of saying…’ she peered up at the ceiling to try and gather her thoughts together, ‘he’s kind of implying that in exactly the same way that a great thinker can also be a great joker, a great joker can also be a great thinker… He’s sort of poking fun at himself but also kind of defending his… uh… ’ Jo chuckled to herself, quietly, ‘He’s such an unrepentant fat-head. You just have to… I mean you just have to stand back and admire it, really.’

She leaned over, liberated the clue from Patty again and quickly re-read it.

‘The way I see it,’ she told him, ‘this whole Rabbit-Duck Duck-Rabbit thing actually has a double meaning. It refers to both cricket and philosophy, because…’

‘But how?’ Patty butted in. ‘ How can something mean two things at once?’

The boy shoved his Brown Derby to one side, grabbed hold of the straw from his drink and twisted it, violently, around his middle finger. Splashes of cola arced through the air. Some hit the window — his shirt — the back of his chair.

Jo didn’t notice, though. She was seduced by the clue, caught up, completely, in its simple complexity.

‘But how? ’ Patty reiterated, even more loudly.

‘Well that’s…’ Jo shrugged her shoulders, ‘that’s sort of the whole point, Patty,’ she spoke distractedly, ‘that’s precisely what grown-up people do when they’re being especially… well, especially grown-up.’

Patty was nonplussed. He still wasn’t getting it. He leaned across the table, snatched back Clue Five and the duck-rabbit, then slapped them down, hard, onto the plastic table-top. The china and the cutlery rattled rather ominously. A member of staff looked up from the counter.

‘But what I need you to do…’ he told her, the tops of his cheekbones jerking furiously, ‘is to tell me the answer. To explain it all to me so that I can get to… so I can… so I can understand the riddle part of it, see?’

Jo was un-fazed by Patty’s raging. She took another sip of her tea (it was cooling down. It was lukewarm now) scratched her neat nose and then peered around the room, calmly. ‘Give me a pen,’ she instructed him, ‘and a spare piece of paper.’

Patty took a sip of his own drink (he wouldn’t jump to her command. He was master of his own destiny), hiccuped loudly (to indicate the strength of his passing contempt), then leaned back and pulled a biro out of his pocket and something to write upon — a small, white sheet, which he unfolded, flipped over (little fingers delicately raised, his eyes holding hers, confidently, his mouth half-smiling — like some kind of amateur magician).

Jo snatched the paper (ignoring all his cocky ostentation. Bloody hell this child was heavy-going), laid it flat, smoothed it flatter still, grabbed the biro and carefully wrote: Clue Five at the top of the page, underlined it, then neatly continued, in her small, well-formed hand:

1) Wesley thinks that the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was a bit of a joker. Wag means joke.

She glanced up, ‘Okay?’

The boy rolled his eyes.

Next she wrote:

2) Ludwig invented the duck/rabbit idea as a way of saying that one thing can also be something else at the same time.

For example…

Josephine thought hard for a minute,

… a friend can also be an enemy. A crate is a crate, but if you turned it up the other way it could also be a chair (if you sat on it), or a table, even, if you rested a cup of tea on it…

She looked up, ‘Alright?’

The boy shrugged. He was unfocussed.

‘It’s pretty complicated,’ she attempted to clarify things, ‘but it’s only a question of applying a little bit of… well… lateral…’ She re-thought her vocabulary, ‘ practical thinking.’

Next she wrote:

3) By using the words ‘duck’, ‘rabbit’ and ‘catch me out’, Wesley is saying that the Loiter is a kind of game — like cricket — but he is also indicating…

Jo crossed out this word.

… SAYING that whatever it is that we are all looking for — the prize — isn’t actually WHAT IT SEEMS. That’s the important part.

The last four words Jo underlined three times. On the third underlining she broke through the paper, but then tidied up the small hole she’d created, as best she could, with her index finger. ‘Okay?’

Patty was still staring at her, blankly, his feet banging out a tap-dance under the table. Jo sucked on her tongue (this boy was revoltingly hyper-something. He was crying out for a handful of Ritalin), and then continued writing:

4) In this clue, as in many of the others, Wesley employs…

She crossed out ‘employs’.

… USES a word that makes the reader think of sweetness. Or confectionery. In this case, ‘honey’. He uses it sarcastically. In Clue One, for example, he uses the word ‘sucker’ —as in lolly — but remember: a sucker is also a word that refers to someone being taken for a fool. Is Wesley warning us of something here?

DOES WESLEY THINK WE ARE ALL…

At this point the pen ran out. Jo shook it a few times.

… FOOLS??!

She finished with less of a flourish than she would’ve liked, but once she’d taken the time to re-read her handiwork she seemed moderately pleased with it.

‘There.’

She shoved the piece of paper back over to Patty.

‘Thank you.’

He took it — a smug little grin dimpling the corner of his thin lips — and held it up in front of him, squinting disdainfully at what she’d written (not really reading, only pretending), then peering up and over, every so often, to try and gauge her reaction.

Jo stared back at him, tiredly. She was lost. He had lost her. She couldn’t begin to understand what he was about, what he wanted, what he was after. During his dumb show, her eyes focussed, passively, on that tiny point where her pen’s sharp nib had broken the paper’s thin ply, minutes earlier. The light was now filtering through this hole, like a sparking Pluto, or a pin-prick Jupiter.

1-2-3…

She suddenly crackerjacked out of her reverie.

‘Oh my… ’

She bounced forward, ‘You horrible little… ’

‘What?’ Patty darted back, snatching away the paper, his grey eyes sparkling.

‘What?’

(It was one of those flawless ten-year-old boy questions, so complete and facetious, it demanded no answer.)

Jo leaned forward, urgently, ‘You kept it, you bugger. ’

Was she furious? Was she delirious?