Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Ted was astonished, ‘You’re telling me Eileen asked you to slaughter this creature?’

‘Oh no no no no, ’ Wesley shook his head, ‘Eileen’s far too tender. She believed we were saving it.’

‘So she must’ve been… it must’ve been… awful… ’

‘When I cut its throat? Nope. She didn’t see. I was quick. It was dark. I wanted to spare her. Next time I see her I’ll tell her it died…’ he paused, employing his two dark eyebrows rather wickedly, ‘at night, in its sleep.’

He grinned — his smile rapidly slithering beyond the bounds of the cynical, trespassing onto the heartless, annexing the insensible — then he adjusted the bird slightly. It was heavy.

Ted was still unable to picture these furtive happenings — as Wesley had described them — with any kind of clarity. He needed precision. He demanded transparency.

‘And so you were… You…’

‘What?’ Wesley was bored, was moving on already. He peered down the corridor, after Katherine. He could hear a glass jingling in what he presumed to be the kitchen; the metallic rasp of a screw-top lid.

‘And where did this all happen?’

‘Pardon?’

‘With Eileen.’

‘Where? On a private fishing pier. And we didn’t fuck, ’ Wesley grimaced, ‘if that’s what you’re getting at. She’s much too sweet. I’d give it at least — at the very least — two dates before I even touched her.’

Wesley paused, then added — for the sake of accuracy, ‘By that I mean sexually.’

Ted was so appalled by what Wesley was telling him (I mean Eileen was an angel. Eileen was a goddess. She was Gaia. A Madonna. A mother figure. And… And married. Irretrievably. He really couldn’t… he simply…) that even Wesley found his brave — if unobtrusive — show of old-fashioned moral outrage difficult to ignore. He tipped his head to one side, flipping a stray lock of hair from his eye.

‘I have a reputation,’ he explained boredly, ‘for sleeping with librarians. But so bloody what? ’ he self-justified. ‘It’s just a rumour. It’s a fucking crock. I’m gonna put this bird in the kitchen. Are you any good at plucking? Might you be staying on for something to eat later?’

‘I don’t…’ Ted frowned, conflictedly, ‘I still want…’ he followed Wesley a few steps down the corridor, reaching out his arm to him, resting his hand on his shoulder, ‘I’m just not entirely sure that this arrangement… I’m not confident that Katherine…’

‘I can handle her,’ Wesley grinned roguishly, purposefully misinterpreting the locus of his agitation, ‘and I’m touched by your concern, Ted,’ he hitched up his shoulder and pushed down his cheek towards Ted’s hand. Touched Ted’s fingers with it, ‘you soft-hearted creature…’

Then he quickly withdrew the cheek, scowling, ‘What is that?’

‘Sorry,’ Ted moved his hand, touching the offending fingers together, feeling them adhere, ‘rubber glue. Katherine had a puncture.’

‘Nowhere painful, I hope.’

Ted didn’t get the joke.

‘It’s just that…’ he returned brazenly — fearlessly — to his former subject, ‘it’s… What you might not realise is that Katherine tends to express everything she feels through…’

‘Let me guess,’ Wesley interrupted, pursing his thick lips, ‘through…’ he glanced around him, ‘through dirt? Through chaos? Is that it? No. No, she expresses stuff sculpturally, with mango pips and wire. What better way? Am I right? Or is it beansprouts? Or booze? Or the heat? Or is it… perhaps… could it… could it possibly be…’ Wesley mugged a parody of astonishment at him, ‘could it be sex, Ted?’

Ted regretfully abandoned this line of conversation, but he still couldn’t let Wesley get away from him entirely. He grabbed the loose sleeve of his mac. ‘Just while we’re alone, Wesley, you wouldn’t happen to know anything…’ he dropped his voice, guiltily, ‘about computers, would you? It’s… I have this rather pressing…’

‘Nope. Not a damn thing,’ Wesley lied guilelessly, ‘but…’ he thought for a moment — picturing Arthur in his mind’s eye, very solidly, for some reason —‘but I think I might know somebody…’ His thoughts suddenly drifted, ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’ Ted frowned, confounded.

‘I like her brutality.’

Ted frowned deeper, still not following.

‘Katherine’s. Her brutality. I like it. I find it… I find her endearing.’

‘The thing is, Wesley,’ Ted tried again, ‘it’s all much more… more complicated than you’re actually…’

‘What is?’

‘This situation. With Katherine. And Canvey. There’s a local journalist — a man called Bo, who used to play tennis, professionally — and he wants to know… and he doesn’t… well, he might make things a little tricky for her if I don’t… he sort of implied… he…’

Ted tried his damnedest to clarify things. It wasn’t easy. ‘And then there’s Dewi…’

‘Ted, Ted, Ted, ’ Wesley crooned, brushing his delicately insistent fingers away, ‘let’s talk about all this stuff later, shall we? Would you have a heart? My arms are breaking.’

He started walking.

Ted gulped, ‘But at least… Could you…’

Mary Mother of Bloody…

Wesley spun around, scowling, ‘What?’

Ted flinched at the scowl, ‘I just… I only wondered whether…’

‘ What? ’

‘Well, whether it was true about the pond. All that stuff about… all those stories about… about the pond.’ If it was true, then at least that would be… That would mean…

At least that might make everything…

Wesley paused for a split second. He plainly didn’t like this question. He tried not to… had it been anybody else he would’ve — as a matter of course — he would’ve refused an answer. All this stuff from the past… the way it haunted him… the boredom… but Ted was…

The poor sod.

‘It’s all true, Ted,’ he told him gently, ‘every stupid detail. Only not quite so pretty, and a little bit more — as life invariably is — a little bit more… more messy. ’

‘Just so long as…’

Ted leaned against the wall, exhausted. Closing his eyes. Weak with relief.

Wesley frowned at him for a moment, then shrugged, turned, and strolled off down the corridor, still clutching the bird to him, his tired mind (God, the way… the way that poor bird fought… the way it buckled when…) slowly switching tracks, like a heavy goods train, redirecting itself, gradually, to sternly focus on the rather more pivotal issue of dinner.

Doc sat heavily on the pavement, his shoulders slumped forward, his knees pulled up tightly, sweating copiously, breathing emphatically; fagged out, knocked up, spent, entirely.

His old, overworked joints popped and creaked, like a distant fireworks party (hosted several miles away in a quiet, black valley). In fact, when he turned his head at one point, the snap, the click — like a rifle cocking — made Hooch, who stood to his right, politely holding out a plastic mug of tea, start back suddenly and slop the scalding liquid onto the tender skin between his right thumb and his index finger. He cursed, but silently, not wishing to distract — even for a second — from the sheer panorama of Doc’s exhaustion; its drama. Its pathos. Its out and out majesty.

Doc had already yanked off his mud-encrusted boots — tossing them hastily onto the grass verge behind him — and was now struggling to remove his chunky thermal socks from his heavily callused feet; slowly drawing the thick fibre clear of the fragile skin, paying special attention to the delicate areas where old blisters — and new — leaked sticky plasma into the thick woollen knit and formed a kind of glutinous bond there.