Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Even Katherine found it difficult not to be impressed by the wing’s unfolding; by its bright and flawless close-knit construction. Wesley attacked the second one. He removed it — after a brief struggle — then placed them both, side-by-side, on the table-top.

He looked around him. On the floor close to his feet — stuffed into an old half tea-crate — were a pile of shells, some mouldering sheafs of wheat (semi-weaved into a dolly) and two coils of wire; one brass, and thin, the other steel and thicker.

He grabbed the steel wire, cut off a long segment with his knife and rapidly threaded one end — in and out, in and out — through the top strut of the left wing.

Katherine watched him intently, her mouth slightly open.

‘Don’t just gape, ’ Wesley reprimanded, ‘loosen your clothing and come on over.’

She didn’t move initially. She continued inspecting him for any casual indication of cursory derision –

Nothing

— so she took a last puff on her cigarette, balanced it, carefully, facing inwards, between the two taps on her stainless steel sink and slowly walked over.

‘Katherine Turpin,’ she muttered (her reputation preceding her, like a series of bright ripples in a shallow puddle of dirty water), ‘game for anything.’

‘Kneel down for me.’

She frowned. She rested her hands on her hips, briefly. Then she knelt — her face glowing — before him.

‘Good.’

Wesley carefully inspected Katherine’s apricot layers. He removed the first two (they came away easily; the silky wools massed, slithered, formed warm piles on the floor) then paused ruminatively when he reached the third and fourth (the first two’d had sleeves, the others had been casually doctored — the sleeves torn away, and the collars — so that the frayed edges which remained tickled lightly at her throat and shoulders).

Underneath these half-altered items she wore — he smiled when he saw it — an old-fashioned 1930s peach bodice. Loose-ish. Under that, an old, ill-fitting, heavy-fabric, cream-coloured bra.

‘I’ll try not to scratch you,’ he told her, as he slowly threaded the wire across her collar bones, under each of her double straps, over and around the back of her. When he’d finished, the first wing hung limply at her shoulder. Almost apologetically.

He threaded in the second wing — this one with more difficulty because of his missing fingers — the cigarette still hanging slackly between his lips, his hands still bloody and feathery, then adjusted them both gently, touching her throat, her neck, her nape, her hair.

The whole process took many minutes. Katherine knelt — blissfully mute — goosebumps forming intermittently.

(He was very dark. Very handsome. Like the bad character in a children’s story. Shadowy, temporary, incomplete. She liked that. She…)

He finally drew back, removed the cigarette from between his lips, and held it away, conducting a thorough — and rather lordly — inspection of his achievements.

‘Katherine Turpin,’ he told her, ‘you are…’

Angelic wasn’t cutting it.

‘A little fairy. Playing on the compost heap. Kicking up the turnip heads. Trampling the cabbage leaves. Full of spite. Full of… full of air… ’

‘ Tinkerbell, ’ he suddenly remembered — as if he’d only just met up with her after almost an eternity, ‘once she’d got all disillusioned,’ he pushed back Katherine’s hair — light as thistle-down against the broken skin of his mined hand, ‘all pissed-up and fucked-off and bitter.’

Katherine remained kneeling. She hunched her shoulders and smiled at him. She seemed to find this nasty fairy evocation particularly pleasing. Her wing’s reach was five foot at least. The wire pulled across — and pinkened — her breastplate. Her bra-straps creaked under the pressure of it. The wings shuddered mothily as she breathed in. Wesley breathed in too. He leaned forward and inhaled her. Her eyelids dropped. Her lips parted. She thought he might…

Ted walked in.

‘Oh Jesus bloody Christ, ’ he stuttered, barely missing a wing with the door.

‘Hi Ted,’ Wesley was unmoved, ‘what do you reckon?’

‘She…’ Ted gawped at her. Smears of blood on her neck. Wings. He could see her… her bra. Bad fitting. One breast half-slipping out beneath it. Like… like…

Tripe.

Ted didn’t understand women. Not at all.

Katherine reached out her pale arm, took the cigarette from between Wesley’s fingers and smoked on it herself. She stared deeply into his vile, sage eyes. The wings fell lop-sided.

Wesley liked this even better.

‘You are fallen,’ he announced.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Katherine countered.

Ted cleared his throat

I’m such a… such a lump

I’d hate to spoil the…’

I’m such a…

‘but I think there might be…’

The heron’s torso lay across the kitchen table, a bloodied embankment, between himself and Wesley. Wesley was sitting on a stool, remarkably self-contained, plucking away again, vigorously — Remember the pond.

Katherine clambered to her feet, looking around — slightly dazed — for her glass on the counter, finding it, drinking from it, her wings slipping further.

‘Spit it out,’ Wesley said.

She turned — alarmed — almost ready –

Oh my God

— to oblige him. Then she realised.

‘Trouble,’ Ted continued, and pointed, somewhat ineffectually, back down the corridor. ‘Is it Dewi?’ Katherine’s voice was hardened by self-disgust and the liquor.

Wesley glanced up, sharply.

‘I think…’ Ted interrupted again, ‘I think it might be…’

‘Behindling,’ Wesley flapped his bad hand, ‘just ignore them.’

‘No, but…’ Ted floundered, ‘well, there are Behindlings; the old guy we saw in the Wimpy earlier, and another man in a white van…’

‘Hooch,’ Wesley grimaced, adjusting the bird again.

‘But it’s the Police, too. They just pulled up outside. In a jeep.’

‘Looking for the boy,’ Wesley shrugged. ‘He’s under some kind of care order. It happens all the time. It’s nothing, believe me.’

Before he’d finished speaking, however, there came an authoritative rap on the front door, followed, seconds later, by the lifting of the postal flap, a short hiatus, then its snap.

‘Will I answer it?’ Ted asked, breathing slightly faster. Katherine lifted her shoulders (as if suddenly feeling the chill) then bent stiffly over to pick up her pool of cardigans from the floor. ‘It’s my door,’ she said, her voice, as she crouched down, sounding — and for the first time — a little slurred.

The doorbell rang. Just a second too long to be entirely friendly. ‘Let Ted go,’ Wesley told her, ‘those wings’ll make it difficult to manoeuvre properly.’

He stood, placing his hand, as he rose — the slightest pressure — onto her shoulder. This weight pressed through her body and into her heels. They glued her to the floor.

Ted had gone already. Wesley followed, just a few steps behind him.

‘Don’t mention the bird, Ted,’ he instructed him, his voice hollowed by the close walls of the corridor. ‘If it is the police and they notice the blood, tell them it was a rabbit…’

The floor was… was warm. Katherine sat down on it, like a child in a sandpit — hands spreading flat behind her, knees falling open. The wings were heavy. She collapsed onto her back and stared up at the ceiling; bird-bones creaking, feathers skidaddling. The ceiling… right above her. So profoundly reassuring. So flat. So white. So very familiar.