Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Handsome

Wounded

Infernal

Filthy)

‘You are three hours late.’

One hundred and eighty minutes. Fuck. That was forever.

‘Well, hello there,’ Wesley pushed straight past her and into the hallway. ‘Would you mind closing the door? Are you Katherine? Is Ted about? Did he wait for me?’

He spun around, as an afterthought, holding out his hand to her, ‘I’m Wesley, by the way.’

‘And any illusions you may’ve clung to…’ she calmly continued, closing the door (but not because he’d asked her to. She’d have closed the damn thing anyway. It was her door. It was icy out there), ‘about creating a favourable…’

She paused and then inspected the proffered hand more closely. It was the damaged one (just a thumb) and it was tremendously gory.

‘ Blood. ’

The enlivened tone of her husky voice denoted fascination (perhaps even glee, Wesley observed, delightedly) rather than any of the more customary emotions.

Katherine’s keen eyes glanced down further. ‘Oh man, ’ she expostulated crossly (her frisky ebullience instantly terminating), ‘it’s dripping all over my clean floor.’

Clean floor?

Wesley raised one quizzical eyebrow, but didn’t take this opportunity to inspect (or curtail) the mess he was generating. Instead he stuck his puggish snout high into the air, and sniffed around, like a hound. ‘This place still reeks of hamster,’ he informed her with just a hint of flirtation, ‘which is absolutely fine by me.’

(We need compromise, he was implying, on both sides, here.)

Katherine frowned over at him, bemusedly. He was quite a card, this Wesley. And unabashedly chippy.

She readjusted her former evaluation of him accordingly:

Mongrel

Card

Chippy

Filthy

Yup. That was pretty much the sum of it.

Wesley stood straight and unblinking (if somewhat uncomfortably) throughout Katherine’s brief critical reassessment of him, his second arm — his good arm — tucked up inside his coat (the sleeve dangling limply, the tip shoved, Napoleonically, into the pocket). Something large, something bulky, was also concealed under there. These two factors weren’t liable — Katherine decided — to be entirely unconnected.

Wesley smiled cryptically at Katherine’s expression of quizzical perturbation, his cheeks still part-frozen from the cold outside, his two mucky eyes glowing sulphurically.

Odour — malodour — inodour; it suddenly didn’t matter. Of far greater significance (at that particular juncture) was how bony she looked; how proud, how loud, how delightfully faded; how fucked-up, how worn-out, how sexy — jaded — drained — sculpted.

She was a beauty.

And the crucial part of it (the best part) was this wonderful sense of contrariness which seemed rooted at the heart of her: she was sharp and yet lovely, pallid and yet blooming, succulent yet rotten, skinny yet… yet curvy; her breasts –

Ah yes, her breasts

— pendulous as two over-ripe figs on a fragile switch; pulling it down into a tender curtsey, flirting with gravity, drooping softly and slackly and gently and carelessly.

Hmmn. He could hear… He…

Wesley closed his eyes.

He could hear the flies buzzing. The flesh, the sugar, the sweet… the luscious infestation of tiny black pips. Yes. He was in Eden. But after the fall. With Eve — in the Orchard — once things finally got interesting.

Katherine cleared her throat. Wesley opened his eyes again, still swaying slightly, his nostrils twitching, delinquently.

She smelled of booze — he could scent it on her; that sickly, high, sweaty aroma — but she seemed basically sober (had a sober personality, he could tell; was a rigorous whore with a Methodist core), although her eyes — blue-grey like the fragile eggs of the Glossy Ibis: slightly bawdy, distinctly goatish — appeared in some danger of glazing over. In her left hand she held an empty whisky tumbler.

‘Chinchilla,’ she finally corrected him, ‘you monkey. ’

He had no idea what she was referring to. He’d forgotten almost everything in his sensuous miasma.

While they both stalled for a moment (to digest, re-appraise, re-arm and — in Katherine’s case: he’d called her a cunt, the bastard — take aim), the estate agent — Ted — silently emerged from Katherine’s sitting room (he had waited. He was scrupulous to the point of lunacy), padded down the corridor in his stockinged feet and gently tapped Wesley on the shoulder.

‘So you finally made it,’ he started off, genially, (no hint of a rebuke), and then, ‘but what on earth have you…’

He didn’t finish.

Wesley dumped his rucksack, turned around, and — by way of explanation — unzipped his mac. Ted promptly delivered a neatly circumscribed little shriek (like the scream of a small girl on a hot beach after stepping on a washed-up jellyfish).

The bird Wesley clutched to him was long and limp and very dead; its throat almost severed in one brutal cut. It was wrapped up, tightly, in his jacket, and the coarse brown fabric — like the bird itself — was saturated with blood.

Katherine Turpin circled tightly around him (space — in this small hallway — was at a premium), intent upon securing herself a better look.

‘What is that?’ she asked, already knowing the answer, battling back her incredulity, almost succeeding, ‘and why are you hiding it?’

‘Heron. Protected Species,’ Wesley cordially informed her. ‘Not from you, apparently.’

Wesley gave this comment a moment’s consideration. ‘I don’t honestly believe, Katherine,’ he smiled at her, intently, staring raptly but gently, into both of her eyes, ‘that anything is absolutely safe from me.’

Was he making fun of her?

Ted unleashed a nervous giggle, then blushed as he gulped it down like a youthful lover clumsily swallowing his gum before a sticky kiss.

‘May I just say,’ Katherine turned her back on the pair of them, disdainfully, ‘that if you’re seriously proposing to stay here,’ her voice — thoroughly cool, typically casual — sailed like a paper plane over her shoulder, ‘then you should get that cadaver out of my corridor.’

She swept off regally — all a-flutter in her antique apricot, her feet slapping the tiles, flat and bare — towards the kitchen (needed another drink. Really needed it), carrying with her (and it was not an entirely welcome burden) the uncomfortable sensation of having been trumped, or topped, or bettered in some way.

Wesley quietly considered Katherine’s recommendation, folded over its corner (for easier identification) and summarily shelved it. The heron was here now, and it was definitely staying.

Ted — regaining a tad of his former composure — moved in closer to inspect the bird. He drew near enough to brush his fingertips against its soft neck-feathers, then peered at the flesh below, as if inspecting the skin for seams or tucks or stitches. He found none. God was many things, Ted mused, but he was no master tailor.

‘Did you kill it?’ he eventually asked.

‘Yes,’ Wesley nodded, ‘it was old and starving.’

‘How did you catch it?’

‘A librarian helped me. It was her idea.’

‘A librarian?’

Ted stopped his close inspection and looked up sharply.

‘A woman called Eileen.’

‘ Eileen? ’

‘You know her?’ Wesley paused for a second, then clucked his tongue, tartly. ‘But of course you know her. You know everybody.’