Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Wesley smiled at Ted’s indignance. ‘This is Furby, Ted,’ he explained gently, pulling some extraneous tape adhesive from around his lips, ‘he’s my greatest fan. He gave me…’ he pulled back his sleeve — matter-of-factly — to reveal the vicious scar from what looked like a long stab wound to his left forearm, ‘ this little beauty while I was still sleeping, Christmas morning, two years ago, and this …’ he pulled back his shirt collar to reveal a shorter less specific area of scarring across the top of his right shoulder, ‘last February when he ran me down on a stolen moped. He isn’t really interested in answers. He’s much more interested in…’ he chuckled, almost fondly, ‘in celebrating the whole process of asking. ’

Ted frowned. He didn’t understand why it was that Wesley was being so flippant. Shouldn’t he at least be angry — or indignant — or… or scared?

Wes pointed towards the mirror, weakly, ‘Seven long years… huh?’ He rubbed his hands over his face, slicked back his wet hair, grinned.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you accompany…’ the female officer interrupted him (as further back-up started arriving).

‘And screw me…’ Wesley deadpanned smartly –

He loved the pain

Oh God he loved it

‘if it hasn’t already bloody started.’

Her face was now so well acquainted with the tiles at the base of the toilet that the shallow dip — the path, the furrow, the indentation — between the particular two upon which she’d rested her heavy head had etched a matching ridge into the soft flesh of her cheek. Even her lower lip had a special… a brief and tender little pucker in it.

Katherine gently ran her thumb across this fault-line — this rift — as she gazed — red-eyed — at her reflection in the mirror. Her bath was running –

Hot

Steaming

— and the mirror was gradually condensing over. She coughed, clutched at her head, shivered –

That’s no bad thing, either

— and turned away.

In the roar of the water she could just about decipher the softest –

Knocking, was it?

— pounding.

A fault with the plumbing? A kink in the boiler? Her heart racing? Her blood pumping? The early warning signs of a migraine?

She slowly rotated her head on her shoulders — so stiff it made a sound like a pepper grinder — then took off her apricot dress (the burn on her lap made her tut, miserably), her vests, her shift, her bra and dropped them all onto the floor. She stood there in her knickers, pushing a heavy hand through her knotted hair. She rubbed her eyes and suddenly remembered that her essential bath oil –

Six sweet drops

Lavender

— was still sitting on her bedside table, next to her oil-burner.

She staggered to the door, shoved back the bolt and yanked it open; a plume of hot, misty air burst out ahead of her, almost entirely enveloping the person standing there.

Katherine screamed.

Even as she screamed she realised that she wasn’t really the screaming kind. Her voice was too low. She sounded like a drag queen who’d just broken a false nail five minutes before a big show. It made her head hurt, her throat, tensed the muscles in her neck; and valuable seconds were all but throttled inside this vile and piercing clamour.

But –

Aw, heck

— it was too late to take it back.

‘I’m so sorry, ’ Eileen gasped — pushing herself up hard against the opposite wall, utterly panicked (almost tripping over a broken coffee percolator Katherine had casually stored down there) — ‘but the front door was… and I wanted… I’ve come about… Wesley said…’ She was staring — round-eyed, aghast — at Katherine’s breasts.

Katherine made no effort to cover herself up. She stood tall and puffy-eyed in just her knickers and her scratches.

‘Wesley isn’t here,’ she put her hand to her throat, scowling, ‘but it’s open fucking house in this place today, so you just come right in — stroll through my front door — swan about in my hallway — kick my old percolator — gaze at my tits like they’re out on display in a tabloid fucking newspaper. You do just as you like, okay?’

Eileen shifted her stare. Her eyes were almost teary. She was shaking slightly.

‘I came about the… the bird, ’ she murmured –

Not… Not… Not…

Katherine continued to scowl at her. ‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she pointed — slightly mystified, ‘through there.’

Eileen followed the direction of Katherine’s finger with her dreamy blue eyes –

‘Is it alright if I just…?’

She ducked her head, apologetically.

‘Sure.’ Katherine grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her as Eileen scurried on ahead. She was wearing a pair of tan, stretch-fabric ski-pants, some little brown boots, a caramel-coloured winter coat with a silk scarf tied around her head. The scarf was pink with tiny, beautifully-painted cowrie-shells and whelk-shells and sting-winkles on it.

‘I like your scarf,’ Katherine growled, still finding some difficulty in placing one foot in front of the other.

‘Thank you.’ Eileen smoothed a nervous hand over it as she disappeared into the kitchen.

When Katherine re-entered this room herself, everything seemed very bright to her. She tried to adjust her eyes, blinked a few times. The whole area was still awash in feathers. Wesley’s rucksack sat in the corner. It was very hot — smelled of booze and sweat and cigarettes.

‘So he invited you to dinner?’ Katherine croaked, trying not to see the room the way Eileen was seeing it, but grabbing a broom from behind the door and circling the table, leaning heavily on it. She bent down — almost lost her towel, nearly toppled right over — and picked up the heron’s wings; hanging the one still on its wire over the back of the chair, placing the other onto the seat.

Eileen was looking around her, confusedly. She was staring at the wings, frowning at the feathers.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘where is he?’

She gazed over towards the chinchilla’s cage, almost as though half-expecting to see the wild bird crammed in there.

‘The oven,’ Katherine indicated with her head (winced), ‘it’s been cooking for just over an hour.’

Eileen still didn’t seem to understand, so she pointed towards the bird’s head, still lying — gold-green-eyed, harpoon-beaked — on the table. Wesley’s vicious bone-handled hunting knife lay just beyond it.

Eileen’s scarf fell back from her face. Her mouth dropped open. She put up her hand to try and disguise her astonishment.

‘Oh my God,’ Katherine murmured, ‘how did you scratch…’

And then — hard upon it — ‘Oh fuck, my bath. ’

She careered off, unsteadily, down the corridor.

When she finally got there the water was almost running over. She turned off the tap, reached down for the plug, released it, discovered — with a gurgle of rage and a shudder — that the tap had run cold. The bath was lukewarm.

She let it drain –

Screw the bloody environment

— cursing.

When she returned to the kitchen, pulling on her clothes again — catching her fingers in her clasps — noisily haranguing her ineffectual water-heating system; the librarian, the chief librarian: her brown boots, her shell scarf, her ski-pants, her scratches, her look of gently haunted bemusement, had all miraculously evaporated.

Along with — Katherine harrumphed so violently that a single, thin apricot strap fell charmingly from her shoulder — Wesley’s best knife, and that poor, that old, that undeniably beautiful but exceedingly dead heron’s head.