Nicola Barker - Behindlings

The guide pooh-poohed this, ‘It’s nothing. It’s fine. Don’t worry. I must’ve…’ he smiled, ‘ misconstrued… ’

He put his hand up to his hair, pushed his fringe back from his forehead. Used his left hand. As he raised his arm and the sleeve of his coat fell away, Jo saw that he was wearing a watch on that left wrist. A good watch. Swiss Army.

‘Guess I’ll see you later.’

He turned and jogged back to join the others. Jo remained where she was for a moment. She shook her head, slowly — stopped — gazed blankly ahead of her, frowned — then shook it a second time, for a little longer.

The little kid — the boy — Patty –

Was that his name?

— had taken up residence on the pavement directly opposite Katherine’s. He looked, Ted thought — if possible — even grimier than he had done the day before. He was devouring a cheese and salad sandwich, its plastic wrapper casually discarded in the gutter, along with most of the tomato and most of the cheese.

‘Where’s Wesley?’ the kid asked — his gums white with bread — as Ted crossed the road in front of him.

‘I have no idea.’

Ted tried to sound civil (he knew what a potential powder-keg the kid could be).

‘ Prick, ’ the kid murmured darkly — although barely audibly. Then, ‘ Stupid damn wanker. ’ Then (Ted stiffened his back, prepared himself)…

‘ Ginger winger. ’

He made it to the opposite pavement, smartly eclipsed Katherine’s conifers, turned into the driveway and drew to an abrupt halt.

Bo was leaning in Katherine’s porchway, smoking a fag, casually perusing her paper.

‘Another loyal member of your ever-expanding fanclub, eh, Ted?’ he grinned.

‘Bo,’ Ted muttered, ‘it’s you.’

‘Ever the one for stating the fucking obvious,’ Bo responded, deftly re-folding the paper and shoving it through Katherine’s letterbox, ‘and it can’t be any coincidence, can it, sir, that your appearing here this morning happens to coincide with a series of rumours about a certain celebrity-troublemaker having taken up temporary residence at this address?’

‘ Uh… ’ Ted tried to think on his feet but they were already fully engaged in the act of supporting him. So he went with his gut, instead.

‘No,’ he said.

This wasn’t quite the answer Bo’d been expecting (a pathetic attempt to lie would’ve been marginally more satisfying). His mono-brow rose, fractionally. His black eyes glimmered.

Unfortunately this wasn’t quite the answer Ted’d anticipated delivering, either –

That damn gut

‘Because…’ Ted continued (perhaps ill-advisedly), ‘because Pathfinder set it up, late yesterday evening. Very late. After all that trouble in the bar…’

‘And was this before,’ Bo rubbed his wide jaw, speculatively, ‘or after that same charming lodger physically assaulted his wife?’

Ted stared at him blankly. ‘Wesley’s married?’

‘Oh God, ’ Bo bit on his knuckles, faux-dramatically, ‘and you actually hold down a responsible position in this town, Ted?’

Ted frowned (was this question purely rhetorical?), then he nodded — slowly — almost imperceptibly (on the off-chance that it wasn’t).

Bo threw down his cigarette, crushed it underfoot and turned to the door.

‘I thought we had an agreement,’ Ted said (his gut working overtime; transcending his head), ‘I thought we’d agreed that you wouldn’t be bothering Katherine with any of this mess.’

‘The Bean girl,’ Bo smiled, caustically, ‘needs to vamoose. And who better to persuade her?’

‘How does the Bean girl enter into any of this?’ Ted asked, frowning confusedly.

‘If I can’t get what I want from the monkey…’ Bo shrugged, letting the second half of his sentence unfold silently, mid-air.

Ted stared at him.

I’m waiting for life to start — he thought — just the same as the rest of them. I’m not the original picture anymore. I have become a duplication of the real me. I am a copy.

‘Just go to the office, Ted.’

Bo made a dismissive finger-walking gesture, then turned to the door and lifted the knocker. Ted did as he was instructed, obligingly, then suddenly — and without warning — rotated back sharply to his former position.

‘You were never any good at tennis, Bo,’ he said.

He hadn’t thought it possible he could feel this tired. The Solitaire had played its part. Thirty or more games. Her idiotic banter. She’d developed a series of theories about the peculiar mind-set of his computer –

Tosh-eeee-baaa

— she kept muttering

Tosh-eeee-baaa

She thought this particular game’s designers were incorrigible bastards.

‘These people are just scoundrels, ’ she’d say, ‘I salute them.’

Then she’d salute (quite traditionally) but integrating a v-sign into the second half of the gesture. She plainly found herself terribly amusing.

‘It’s Solitaire,’ Arthur kept interrupting her. ‘They don’t have to do anything to make it interesting. It was interesting before someone put it onto the machine. It’s only chance that keeps you playing. Nobody can design chance. It just happens. It’s random.’

She wasn’t convinced. ‘Of course they can design it. That’s the whole point. They have to keep you interested. It’s their job.’

‘It’s just random,’ he repeated.

Just random

‘When I grow up I’m going to…’ she paused for a second, considered — gazed over her shoulder towards the deer. Brion yawned. Then farted.

‘… Work with animals,’ she concluded, flatly (all emotional declarations of Game Designing instantaneously evaporating). ‘That’s my destiny.’

‘Do you have a computer at home?’ Arthur asked, trying — unsuccessfully — to tie a sock around his wrist using just his other hand and his teeth.

‘Give it here.’ Sasha put the computer aside, grabbed the sock and tied it around, firmly. ‘You’ve made a mess,’ she observed, pointing to his trousers. A dark stain covered the knee-area, but the sight of blood didn’t seem to bother her.

Arthur’s mind turned — for a moment — to the short-haired girl in the bar. The broken bottle. The slashes on her arm. He supposed — tiredly, idly — that through this wound he’d forged a kind of inadvertent kinship with her –

Hate that thought

It’s stupid

Sasha picked up the computer and recommenced her playing. ‘I keep in touch with my dad through the Internet,’ she suddenly announced, ‘and nobody knows a thing about it.’

Arthur’s head swung around — he’d been peering out through the door, listening to the groans of the boat above the tap tap of her fingers, ‘ Do you?’

She nodded.

‘So how does that work exactly?’

‘Easy. There’s a special site I can connect to which gives me up-to-date reports on everything he’s doing. Sometimes hour by hour.’

She cleared her throat. ‘He works for a kind of Secret Service,’ she confided. ‘It’s all very hush-hush-hush. ’

Arthur mulled this over for a second (that endearing one hush too many), ‘Do you ever get to see him?’

She nodded, cheerfully, ‘All the time. In pictures. And he has charisma,’ she peered up at him, proudly, ‘most people have to pay a bundle to get that.’

She continued to gaze at him. ‘ You have it,’ she said (a smiling vision of shameless insincerity).