Nicola Barker - Behindlings

Ah

So this is to be my punishment

— then shoving him aside and taking over herself (if she’d had sleeves she’d have rolled them up), instructing Arthur –

Since when did these two get so tight?

— to time her, and setting both chairs up at just under…

‘Five seconds, per, ’ he said, deftly tapping the glass on his watch-face with his finger.

The chairs — built for lounging — were so low that only their occupants’ heads and necks were visible above the table-top. Katherine and Dewi perched primly on stools which — as the fates decreed — were just fractionally too high (Dewi, at the cutlery drawer end, couldn’t fit his knees under comfortably, so sat sideways, tipped — as was his preference — towards Ted; conspicuously ignoring the now diminutive Arthur).

It was 12.15 a.m. Ted silently thanked the Lord that he’d rung on ahead (crossed himself, inconspicuously).

Katherine snorted, for no apparent reason –

Did she just see?

Dewi’d had him over a barrel. Either they promptly returned to Katherine’s aid — as he touchingly described it — with the help of Ted’s handy house key (Dewi’d known she wouldn’t let him in if he tried to gain access the traditional way. She could recognise his ring. It was actually quite uncanny), or the agency’s bathroom door would remain unhinged, as, doubtless, would Pathfinder, on uncovering the extent of Ted’s wrongdoing the following morning.

Even so — warning or no warning — Katherine was still clad in only her underwear, with a tea towel (decorated in gypsy caravans — one approaching, one in retreat, a barge, a shire horse, a watering can and a calendar: 1994) tucked into her bra. The towel was newly stained at its centre.

Ted was no expert in these matters, but there were definitely the voracious marks of sex all over her (bite marks, scuff marks, suck-marks, finger-prints, general but unspecific wear and tear) and she exuded (even up against the stink of burnt poultry, chinchilla pee, cigarettes, apricot brandy) an exquisitely piquant post-coital aroma.

In the corner, on the sideboard (Ted could only see over there at a stretch from his painfully reduced position) he noted that Arthur was successfully re-energising his computer –

Fast worker, eh?

Dewi re-adjusted his knife and fork into their more traditional positions, straightened his spoon (Katherine — apparently not looking, but patently still seeing — groaned under her breath. He flinched) and then silently followed Ted’s eye-line. He stared at the computer for a long, long while. Then he pointed towards it.

‘What’s that?’ he asked (with all the quizzical moral zeal of a four-year-old child at the public zoo on espying a fully aroused male gorilla approaching an unsuspecting female from the rear). It was the first time he’d actually spoken (they had been in situ now for almost half-an-hour).

‘It talks, ’ Katherine exclaimed, kicking Arthur under the table (as if she was now the child, but visiting a science lab, where Dewi was being held hostage as a creature of experimental interest).

Arthur — ignoring the kick as best he could — glanced over to the sideboard. ‘It’s my computer…’ he said, sounding suitably non-plussed –

What is this?

The Stone Age?

‘It’s just recharging.’

‘What’s it for? ’ Dewi asked (still talking to Ted, ignoring Arthur).

‘ Computering, you imbecile,’ Katherine snarled, ‘what else?’

Good Heavens

— Arthur cleared his throat, anxiously –

A whole shit-load of hostility at work here, apparently

A further silence.

‘Who is he?’ Dewi asked (Ted again — and his timing so exquisitely snail-like that even the agent felt his hackles rising). Dewi tipped his head fractionally in Arthur’s direction (just to make sure), ‘and what’s he think he’s doing here?’

Nobody answered (not least because no one could actually remember Arthur’s name). Arthur himself was struggling… the sex had been… had been…

Bewildering

No

No…

Luminous

No

No…

Nu-minous

(Uh… Was that it?)

‘Who is he?’ Dewi repeated, this time using his thumb (hitching it rudely in Arthur’s direction) and addressing the question directly to Katherine.

He’d crossed a line — Ted could tell, Art could tell — but nobody knew what that line was, precisely, or what crossing it meant.

Katherine stared back blankly (her eyes as bold and empty as a cuckoo’s conscience) then turned to Ted, ‘This is stupid. I’m ravenous. Should we get started on dinner?’

‘I love you, Katy,’ Dewi murmured.

Oh God

Arthur raised his brows, stared at his crotch, chewed on his lip. Ted sank down even lower into his chair. Katherine stood up, grabbed her glass, turned it over, picked up the jug of water close by, stepped back, and poured an exact glassful onto the floor.

Then she placed the jug back down again, walked to the cooker (stepping daintily through the mess), grabbed an oven glove and opened the door.

They all watched, in unison, as she bent over — the stool’s curved wooden edge pinkly printed onto the lower segment of her bottom — removed Wesley’s casserole and carried it over.

Arthur cleared his throat. He remembered Dewi — with a spectacular clarity; in technicolor, in 3D — from the fight in the bar. Dewi’s left fist, in fact (currently resting like a flesh-rock on the table-top) was very slightly grazed across the knuckle –

And I just screwed her on the tiles?

Was I off my…?

‘I’m Arthur,’ he said, ‘Arthur Young. I’m…’

How to explain it?

Which side to take?

How to avoid… To…

‘… I’m a… I’m actually a… a charity worker.’

Wow

They all turned to look at him.

‘To be fucked out of charity in my own kitchen,’ Katherine eventually mused, placing down the casserole pot and lifting the lid, ‘that’s got to be a first.’

Dewi stood up, leaned over the table (Arthur flinched), picked up the water jug and poured himself a glass. He drank it. Still towering above them. Seven huge glugs; his prodigious Adam’s apple bobbing like a locomotive piston.

‘Tell a lie,’ Katherine continued, grabbing a ladle for dishing up, ‘Ted actually fucked me three times out of charity in October last year. I forced you to,’ Katherine cuffed his cheek fondly with the ladle, ‘didn’t I, darling?’

Arthur suddenly began talking. Off the top of his head. Whatever he could… whatever came to…

Had no…

No long-term…

No…

… whatever he could dish-up-serve-present at such short notice… Like a kind of –

Socially-ambivalent free-association

— totally arbitrary mental ratatouille –

Tomato, onion, egg-plant, courgette…

‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with a man called Jonathan… uh… Routh, ’ Arthur cracked his finger-joints — with relief — on remembering the name — from the book — on the bedside table — in the boat — a few hours before, ‘he was one of the… uh… the first… uh… ’

Dewi sat down again, abruptly.

‘He was actually — or he claimed to be — one of the foremost practical jokers of the second half of the last … uh… the last… uh… century. He was behind some awful television programme called… called… called something like… uh… ’