Nicola Barker - Behindlings

‘What isn’t?’ Wesley paused for a second, half-smiling, but keeping his back turned deliberately towards her, ‘What isn’t f-fair? ’ He bleated out the word in a cruel impersonation.

(The concept of fairness seemed so laughable to him, so thin, so weedy, so conceptually pointless. Fair? What kind of rankly amateur, blithering shallow-wit was this woman, anyway?)

Josephine felt her nose running. Was unable to stop it. Tasted the salt of snot on her upper lip. ‘It’s impossible to approach you without… without F-Following. I st-started unintentionally. I was… I got… It’s not what I…’

‘I didn’t get any letter,’ he repeated, ominously, ‘and the potter, for your information, isn’t remotely crazy.’

He was facing into the wind. He’d been released from custody less than ten minutes earlier. He’d had no intention of happening across her. Of getting… getting…

Button-holed

He hated that kind of… of…

Responsibility

It was well past eleven (although time meant nothing to him; time was merely the interval between sleeping and waking, eating and shitting). He briefly half-remembered his promises for dinner. He half-remembered Katherine — the stink of drink — the milky neck — the lazy temptation.

They were standing on a quiet, flat, unremarkable street only five minutes walk from the town centre and the Furtherwick (the Police Station two roads off to their left).

It was foggy, threatening to snow. He felt his own face slowly freezing. His cheek — his chin — his bruises were aching.

‘I only n-need…’ she said — trying to walk forward a step but her legs kept on seizing, ‘just to explain, b-before…’

‘You’ll freeze to death out here,’ he warned her, not sounding particularly concerned by this prospect (more bored by it), but even so…

He weakened for a moment and peered over his shoulder. She was a pathetic sight. Slight as a feather. Shaking like a puppy in a sudden bout of thunder. She was licked and whipped. She was stopped. She was fucked.

‘You were wet,’ he said, suddenly remembering (in a blurry haze, a fug), ‘earlier, in the bar…’ He squinted at her, ‘and you’re still wet. You’ll catch hypothermia. Stop being a fool. You can’t possibly stay out here.’

‘I ha-have to stay,’ she said, ‘I? — need to… I’m in a…’

He growled under his breath and strode impatiently towards her. ‘Show me the arm.’

Her arm was hidden again. She didn’t want to show it. She was humiliated now, by everything. And if he was kind — admittedly, it seemed a remote possibility — but if he was, she would surely start crying. And he would really hate her, then. And deservedly.

He reached out his bad hand — the sheer, shiny pincer of palm and thumb — grabbed a hold of her elbow, yanked it forward and roughly shoved back the sleeve of her jumper. She winced.

‘I thought you were working for the company,’ he said, staring at the cuts as if he couldn’t quite believe in them — four in all, each two inches long, bottle shaped — curving into smiles — a couple thick with dried blood and new scab, the third and fourth still oozing, ‘and even if you aren’t,’ he released her arm dispassionately, ‘you’re only complicating matters unnecessarily.’

‘I’m not wo-working for anybody,’ she chattered.

‘Except yourself,’ he sneered.

He was just as cruel as she’d anticipated. Hateful. It was what she’d wanted. She needed punishing. Pain was her motivator.

‘Get back in the car and start up the engine,’ he ordered.

Jo shuffled around the Mini, pulling her sleeve down, miserably. She opened the door, climbed stiffly inside, pressed down the pedals, turned the key in the ignition.

The car squealed, unresponsively.

She tried again.

A third time.

Wesley slammed down the bonnet. He circled the car, twice (like a predator negotiating a rival’s territory), then he yanked the door open on the passenger side and clambered in.

‘Any talking about specifics,’ he warned her, sticking his seat into recline (but sitting bolt upright in it) ‘about the Loiter, the letter, the Turpin girl, and I’m straight out of here.’

He slammed his door shut, pulled off his waterproof, his jacket and his sweater.

‘Fuck the battery,’ he said, pushing back her hood, yanking off her wet scarf and tossing it onto the back seat, ‘put on the bloody heater.’

‘Just keep ringing,’ Ted said, backing off slowly down the neat, brick pathway and colliding with a conifer (clipping it with his shoulder and starting — not a little comically, Arthur felt — like he’d been cornered, unexpectedly, by an irritable green ogre) then continuing to ease himself — still backwards, still slowly — across the parquet-style driveway (like he was a big saloon car, or an improbably large Pleasure Cruiser on an impossibly small river) carefully maintaining eye-contact — for the best part — so Arthur wouldn’t get all jittery (perhaps) or lose his nerve and follow him — like a lost kitten — all the way back to the agency again, ‘she might’ve fallen asleep or something, but she’s bound to answer eventually…’

He paused, on the roadway, ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer, it’s just…’ He pointed, dumbly –

Glazier

‘Simply tell her who you are and that you’ve arranged to meet up with Wesley here. She’ll be fine about it, honestly. Contrary to what people like to say about her, Katherine can often be very…’ he bit his lip, ‘very accommodating, ’ he murmured faintly (as if suddenly — or not so suddenly — having serious doubts about the overall situation, his unenviable part in it, the actual implications of what he was saying), then smiling (a little weakly), turning, waving, and promptly scarpering.

Arthur frowned. Accommodating? Contrary to her reputation? He pulled the rucksack off his shoulder, tipped back his hat, pushed his finger towards the bell, made contact and sat on it.

Ted had him all wrong. He felt no anxiety about meeting Miss Turpin. He had a very distinct idea of how she would be: sallow-skinned, auburn haired, thick-set, defeated. Like a young Pat Phoenix but without the fight. Like a rough-cut Liz Taylor circa Virginia Woolf, fluffy-slippered, sullen, puffy, mined, fag-ended.

He had no particular concerns about the thought of encountering her. He believed himself an expert in the laws of human behaviour.

He was tough as hide. He could handle anything.

Katherine finally answered during Arthur’s third resounding climax of Sinatra’s My Way (no frills or flourishes in his particular rendition — marginally slower, perhaps, than the more famous original; on the good side of monotonous, the cusp of funereal).

Arthur’s jaw went slack as she opened the door –

Good God

Who would’ve…?

That husky-mouthed, milky-faced, heavy-smoking, fold-up-biking…

That vicious…

She barely glanced at him, though, as she ushered him — rather crabbily — within.

‘ Hate that damn song,’ she muttered, clutching her ear — What was it with the ear?

But it wasn’t so much the ear — it soon transpired — as her whole strange, pale head in all its fabulous entirety. She was savagely hung over.

The hallway — Arthur put his hand to his nose, instinctively, his eyes prickling — was full of smoke.

‘I fell asleep,’ she croaked. ‘It feels like the bell’s been sounding off for hours.’

‘Is something burning?’ he asked, closing the door, putting down his rucksack (there were bags and bottles everywhere) glancing around him — slightly aghast at the mess — and then following her, carefully, down the corridor.