Nicola Barker - Behindlings

He burped.

‘Pardon me.’

‘Fall for what?’

‘ Look at you,’ Wesley suddenly guffawed, pointing at her, ‘you really are one of them. You’re slotting in, Bean… Bean from Southend. I mean Doc bringing you some soup and a fucking…’ he pointed, ‘for Christ’s sake, a fucking sleeping bag.’

He rolled back in his seat, then rocked energetically forward again, as though fuelled by his piss-taking. ‘ Waah! ’ he yelled, waving his hands at her and smiling gummily like a black and white minstrel caught mid-ditty.

Josephine looked stiff. Hurt. She embraced the bag tightly again.

‘ Man, it’s like a disease with you people…’

He peeked at her, hugging himself — grinning, plainly delighted by his own psychological acuity. She looked crushed. She was shivering again.

Cold

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Wesley’s cheer evaporated, ‘I gave you my jacket didn’t I? We’re having a conversation, aren’t we? I could be…’

Having sex with the white skinned girl in that disgracefully hot kitchen, the bird well cooked, full of brandy

‘I know I must seem rather ridiculous to you,’ Josephine murmured softly, ‘and that I made a real fool of myself, earlier, in the bar. It was a… an unnecessary complication — like you said — a distraction — a misjudgement. I can see that now. But I felt so…’ she shrugged, poignantly, ‘so terrible for Dewi. All that hurt — all that upset — it’s all been so unnecessary.’

Wesley’s eyes widened a fraction, ‘You felt sorry for the moose? ’

He was taken aback.

Josephine nodded, ‘He’s the most decent man.’

Wesley put a tentative hand to his jaw, his cheek, ‘For some inexplicable reason,’ he growled, ‘I hadn’t really considered it from his side before.’

‘Sometimes it’s actually harder hitting than just being… just being a… a target, ’ Josephine continued, her confidence growing.

‘And did anybody ever punch you in the face before?’ he asked, forming his bad hand into a fingerless fist, as if seriously considering trying it out for himself.

(Down on his lap, however, his good hand was quietly sneaking its way over towards his bad, pulling it back, loosening it up and then gently touching the scars there — as if they represented a novel kind of braille which he never tired of reading; the primitive topography for a beloved journey.)

‘No,’ Josephine shook her head, ‘and anyway, we’re not meant to be talking about all of that,’ she smiled, ‘are we?’

She stared ahead of her, at the windscreen, staunchly.

Wesley didn’t say anything for a while. Then he pulled his hands apart, reached forward and drew a series of short lines into the moisture on the windscreen. Seven, a small gap, then five

‘So how many letters did Shoes have in place?’ he asked. ‘Can you remember?’

Josephine straightened slightly, peeked at him, side-long.

Is this a test?

Should I dare answer?

She quietly tried to visualise it all in her head; Shoes’ prodigious dough-rise stomach; that inescapably sensuous blue-pale hillock of unassailable flesh.

Wesley drained her cup, meanwhile, then screwed it — and the cap — back into place.

‘He had one D, I think, and two Ns. G at the start. Maybe an E somewhere…’

She leaned forward in her seat, reached out her finger and wrote the letters into the requisite gaps.

G — D — N — EN —

Wesley stuck out his lip and mulled this over. ‘I think you’ll find it’s two Ds,’ he said, pointing to the penultimate letter in the second word, ‘not one. And no E either,’ he added, scratching it out with his thumb.

G — D — N — ND–

Josephine frowned, then reconsidered, ‘You could be right…’

‘Oh I am right,’ he butted in.

‘Really?’ she smiled. ‘Have you seen it yourself, then? Did he show it to you? Wasn’t it amazing?’

Wesley shook his head (he smirked at amazing, though).

‘So how do you know?’ she asked, plainly bewildered, ‘and what’s the answer? Is it something clever? Or…’ she wrinkled up her nose, suspiciously, ‘or something dirty?’

Dirty

Wesley smiled again at her choice of vocabulary. She was so clean, this Bean. ‘It’s just a little joke,’ he said. ‘It’s like your name written on his arse. About the same league as that.’

‘And it has something to do with you, presumably?’

Wesley shrugged. He paused. ‘Do you remember the sound of his toenails tippy-tapping on the tiles from behind you?’

She nodded. She did remember. She almost shuddered.

Wesley nodded, ‘Yeah. Well I hear that sound constantly. I hear that sound in my dreams. I’ve been Followed by fuck-ups quite a bit. It goes with the territory. But he really shits me up sometimes with his gentleness and his fatness and his infernal fucking tippy-tippy-tap. ’

He leaned forward (Jo sunk back, instinctively) and wiped the screen clean with his palm. ‘Pass me the leaves,’ he said, observing her retreat with a half-smile, ‘and give me your arm.’

Josephine did as he asked, then stared at the smudged windscreen again, deep in thought. ‘Here’s a sandwich,’ he said. ‘Eat.’

She took the sandwich with her spare hand while he rolled up her sleeve. Underneath, the flesh was still icy. He found a wad of toilet paper half-covering the cut which must’ve been shifted back when he’d stared at it previously. He carefully unwound it. Then he pulled her arm nearer to his face and inspected it closely.

Josephine’s glazed-over eyes flickered left. She could feel his warm breath. Her skin goose-bumped. She stared down at the sandwich –

Salmon paste

— and took a bite –

No. Tuna

Wesley turned on his side-light. ‘Think you need stitches?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Well I suppose you’re the expert.’

The sandwich was halfway to her mouth. She halted its simple trajectory.

‘Pardon?’

‘You’re the nurse.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Your nails told me. And your hands. And the way you made the cut. And the way you’ve cleaned it up.’

She blinked.

He’d barely finished speaking when he pushed his lips up close to the first wound and… and…

Licked

Not impetuously. Not sensuously. But gently and determinedly, like a well-trained cat.

Jo’s arm stiffened.

‘I’m an expert,’ she said, her voice slightly huskier than normal, ‘in the subject of female gynaecology. I campaign for…’ she took a deep breath, ‘for a more environmentally responsible… uh… use of sanitary…’

Her arm relaxed –

Like a neat-mouthed, clean-tongued…

‘Your professional life is of fuck-all interest to me,’ Wesley murmured, ‘and you have a real pig of an iron deficiency.’

He reached out his good hand, rested it lightly on her cheek and pulled down her left eye’s lower lid. She did not resist, merely gazed at him, passively.

‘ Bingo, ’ he said, returning to her arm again.

The cuts were now all sting and prickle, but she wished he’d lick her forever, just the same.

Everywhere.

He released her arm for a moment and rubbed each dock leaf roughly between his palms (to release the sap, she presumed) and then applied them, individually, to the cuts.

She closed her eyes. She drew a deep breath. The sandwich fell from her hand.

‘So which of the books was it Shoes gave you before?’