Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Patty clucked his tongue at her, faux-sympathetically, ‘ Aw. You honestly thought I’d dropped it back there?’

He proceeded to gently flap the scrap of paper back and forth in front of her, as if inciting her to try for a grab at it. A lunge. A snatch.

Jo didn’t move. She was not to be provoked. She eyed the fluttering form, inscrutably, until it slowed down, until it almost stopped.

‘So what did you drop?’ she asked, still eyeing it determinedly, her voice sounding brittle as nutty toffee.

Patty sucked in his cheeks, ‘ My application form, you fucking bloody mare. ’

‘Did you really.’

Not so much a question, as a dehydrated whip-crack.

‘Huh?’

Jo took a sip of her tea. Cold. Pushed her cup away. Swallowed. Shuddered.

‘What?’ he asked her, and then a second time, ‘ What? ’

Still no answer.

Finally he turned the paper over and focussed in on it himself. His sneer froze.

His eyes rolled.

Then he threw his small head back, hit the thin wall of the cubby with it, expostulated, kicked his knees up, automatically, hit the table with them, expostulated again, tossed himself forward like a small boy-comet, covering the table-top with a hail of flesh and limb and howl and debris. There he rested, breathing heavily.

Why are ten-year-olds, Jo wondered, mildly, (picking up a gherkin and his slightly battered disposable plastic Cola cup) always so unremittingly bloody dramatic?

When Patty finally rose, he did so rather moistly but with a tremulous dignity.

‘I don’t suppose,’ Jo chanced her arm, ‘you might possibly recollect… uh…? ’

No.

Patty lifted his left hand to silence her — as though swearing an oath of allegiance to his own stupidity — while their four eyes met in a superbly well-defined architectural arc of mutual consternation across that dirty plastic table-top.

The first of many strangers arrived with the darkness, and it was almost — Arthur thought — well, poetic, really, under the circumstances, that the first should be the darkest, and quite positively the strangest. Of Middle-Eastern — maybe Iranian — extraction. Spoke no English. They communicated in French, but what little conversation they did have was inconclusive. Arthur wasn’t fluent enough to establish anything definitive: like why he was there exactly, or who he was, or what he wanted.

(Was this man — oh Lord, what a prospect — part of some kind of vaguely shonky, distinctly shady, potentially lunatic international conspiracy? Was this whole scenario much bigger — much more complicated — than he’d ever imagined it might be? He’d always believed the whole Wesley thing to be a peculiarly British phenomenon. A Labour of Sisyphus, but strictly parochial. Warped — pointless — faddish.)

Arthur didn’t want — how to put this, exactly — he didn’t want to feel like this strange man had alarmed him (startled. Yes. That was more like it. The man had surprised him, had… had startled …) but when he subsequently considered the intense and — in all honesty — rather curious interlude that had taken place between them — straight after, and only briefly, because events then rapidly took on their own… their own momentum — Arthur decided (he rationalised?) that it was mainly the stranger’s… his… his impertinence that had left him feeling…

Impertinence?

Was that it? Or was it something marginally less aggressive, something marginally more… Not impertinence. Audacity? Yes. Yes? No.

No, it was his disconnectedness. It was his… his aura of detached familiarity. Was that coherent? Did it make any kind of…?

Arthur had been standing in the kitchen (back to the door, just a couple of feet along from the small window which afforded him a view of all-comers from the Benfleet direction), messing around with his mobile phone (was totally embroiled in what he was doing. Hadn’t seen the man approaching. Hadn’t even the slightest notion …) when this swarthy, medium height, medium build, medium everything kind of person walked on board (the door had been closed. He’d shown some… well… some affinity with the broken door mechanism. Arthur had experimented — several times, in fact — to find a way to open and close it without needing to shove himself against it, bodily. It was warped. It was rather prone to jamming).

This man had entered the boat (casually tipping his head so as to avoid knocking it into the door frame — indicating, Arthur surmised, that he was about 5′8″ or over. Was that… Could that be construed as medium?), shut the door calmly and firmly behind him, then just stood there, rubbing his two gloved hands together (because of the cold, Arthur presumed. It was minus three on the thermometer), staring jovially across the galley at him, smiling.

Full teeth, gums, even a tip of tongue.

Flirty.

‘Can I help you?’ Arthur was startled.

The man paused a while before replying, his eyes glancing around the boat, as if hunting out something in particular. They focussed, briefly, on the gas canister (currently burning), then alighted on Arthur’s laptop computer. The computer (on the sideboard) was open and operational. He was working on a document entitled Agreement of Sale. Underneath this heading Arthur had written; I’ve had a change of heart. Let’s proceed…

The mobile phone Arthur held was connected to it by a wire. Arthur was either sending this document somewhere, or possibly receiving something.

The stranger casually inspected the computer’s ‘ batteries running down — save your document and switch to your mains supply ’ notice, which was temporarily flashing, and also took in (his head tipped, like a bird’s) a tiny, unobtrusive beeping; the audio-warning it was also issuing. His eyes finally tightrope-walked the wire, to the small black phone in Arthur’s hand.

‘The batteries…’ Arthur murmured, balancing the phone carefully onto the windowsill, walking over towards the computer and abruptly banging the lid down. The computer squawked, enraged.

‘ Uh… Can I help you?’ he repeated.

The man put all his fingertips to his lips. Both hands. An impulsive movement (like he’d just tasted something exceptional and wished to congratulate the cook on it: Ah delicious! In that European way — that gesture the French had. The Italians — or like he was a tiny mouse, gnawing, determinedly, on a juicy wild strawberry).

Seconds later, he moved his hands away. ‘I have no English language,’ he spoke softly, his voice higher than Arthur had expected it to be — almost fluting, almost feminine — but his accent so heavy that his words were pretty much indecipherable.

French, was he?

‘Have you come about Wesley? Is that it?’ Arthur asked, cautiously.

This man speaks no English, Arthur, so why are you still talking in it?

‘Ah…’ the man considered this question for a moment (as if it was entirely frivolous, utterly irrelevant, totally inexplicable).

‘ Wesley? ’ Arthur repeated. ‘Is it about him?’

(To be saying the name. To be so embroiled. It just felt… it was just… it was madness.)

The stranger widened his eyes, then nodded, ‘ Ah, oui, ’ he smiled, ‘ Oui. Precis, monsieur. ’

He seemed at ease with French, but by no means fluent in it.

He was still looking about him.

‘ Puis-je… uh… Puis-je, peut-être… uh… vous aider? ’ Arthur asked, haltingly.