Behindlings (27 page)
She was a beauty.
And the crucial part of it (the best part) was this wonderful sense of
contrariness
which seemed rooted at the heart of her: she was
sharp and yet lovely, pallid and yet blooming, succulent yet rotten, skinny yet… yet curvy; her breasts –
Ah yes, her breasts
– pendulous as two over-ripe figs on a fragile switch; pulling it down into a tender curtsey, flirting with gravity, drooping softly and slackly and gently and carelessly.
Hmmn.
He could hear… He…
Wesley closed his eyes.
He could hear the flies buzzing. The flesh, the sugar, the sweet… the luscious infestation of tiny black pips. Yes. He was in Eden. But after the fall. With Eve – in the Orchard – once things finally got interesting.
Katherine cleared her throat. Wesley opened his eyes again, still swaying slightly, his nostrils twitching, delinquently.
She smelled of booze – he could scent it on her; that sickly, high, sweaty aroma – but she seemed basically sober (had a sober personality, he could tell; was a rigorous whore with a Methodist core), although her eyes – blue-grey like the fragile eggs of the Glossy Ibis: slightly bawdy, distinctly goatish – appeared in some danger of glazing over. In her left hand she held an empty whisky tumbler.
‘Chinchilla,’ she finally corrected him, ‘you
monkey.
’
He had no idea what she was referring to. He’d forgotten almost everything in his sensuous miasma.
While they both stalled for a moment (to digest, re-appraise, re-arm and – in Katherine’s case: he’d called her a cunt, the
bastard –
take aim), the estate agent – Ted – silently emerged from Katherine’s sitting room (he had waited. He was scrupulous to the point of lunacy), padded down the corridor in his stockinged feet and gently tapped Wesley on the shoulder.
‘So you finally made it,’ he started off, genially, (no hint of a rebuke), and then, ‘but what on earth have you…’
He didn’t finish.
Wesley dumped his rucksack, turned around, and – by way of explanation – unzipped his mac. Ted promptly delivered a neatly circumscribed little shriek (like the scream of a small girl on a hot beach after stepping on a washed-up jellyfish).
The bird Wesley clutched to him was long and limp and very
dead; its throat almost severed in one brutal cut. It was wrapped up, tightly, in his jacket, and the coarse brown fabric – like the bird itself – was saturated with blood.
Katherine Turpin circled tightly around him (space – in this small hallway –was at a premium), intent upon securing herself a better look.
‘What
is
that?’ she asked, already knowing the answer, battling back her incredulity, almost succeeding, ‘and why are you hiding it?’
‘Heron. Protected Species,’ Wesley cordially informed her. ‘Not from you, apparently.’
Wesley gave this comment a moment’s consideration. ‘I don’t honestly believe, Katherine,’ he smiled at her, intently, staring raptly but gently, into both of her eyes, ‘that
anything
is absolutely safe from me.’
Was he making fun of her?
Ted unleashed a nervous giggle, then blushed as he gulped it down like a youthful lover clumsily swallowing his gum before a sticky kiss.
‘May I just say,’ Katherine turned her back on the pair of them, disdainfully, ‘that if you’re seriously proposing to
stay
here,’ her voice –thoroughly cool, typically casual –sailed like a paper plane over her shoulder, ‘then you should get that cadaver
out of
my corridor.’
She swept off regally –all a-flutter in her antique apricot, her feet slapping the tiles, flat and bare –towards the kitchen (needed another drink. Really needed it), carrying with her (and it was not an entirely welcome burden) the uncomfortable sensation of having been trumped, or topped, or
bettered
in some way.
Wesley quietly considered Katherine’s recommendation, folded over its corner (for easier identification) and summarily shelved it. The heron was here now, and it was definitely staying.
Ted –regaining a tad of his former composure –moved in closer to inspect the bird. He drew near enough to brush his fingertips against its soft neck-feathers, then peered at the flesh below, as if inspecting the skin for seams or tucks or stitches. He found none. God was many things, Ted mused, but he was no master tailor.
‘Did you kill it?’ he eventually asked.
‘Yes,’ Wesley nodded, ‘it was old and starving.’
‘How did you catch it?’
‘A librarian helped me. It was her idea.’
‘A librarian?’
Ted stopped his close inspection and looked up sharply.
‘A woman called Eileen.’
‘
Eileen?
’
‘You know her?’ Wesley paused for a second, then clucked his tongue, tartly. ‘But of
course
you know her. You know everybody.’
Ted was astonished, ‘You’re telling me
Eileen
asked you to slaughter this creature?’
‘Oh no no no
no,
’ Wesley shook his head, ‘Eileen’s far too tender. She believed we were saving it.’
‘So she must’ve been… it must’ve been…
awful…
’
‘When I cut its throat? Nope. She didn’t see. I was quick. It was dark. I wanted to spare her. Next time I see her I’ll tell her it died…’ he paused, employing his two dark eyebrows rather wickedly, ‘at night, in its sleep.’
He grinned –his smile rapidly slithering beyond the bounds of the cynical, trespassing onto the heartless, annexing the insensible –then he adjusted the bird slightly. It was heavy.
Ted was still unable to picture these furtive happenings –as Wesley had described them –with any kind of clarity. He needed precision. He demanded transparency.
‘And so you were… You…’
‘What?’ Wesley was bored, was moving on already. He peered down the corridor, after Katherine. He could hear a glass jingling in what he presumed to be the kitchen; the metallic rasp of a screw-top lid.
‘And where did this all happen?’
‘Pardon?’
‘With Eileen.’
‘Where? On a private fishing pier. And we didn’t
fuck,
’ Wesley grimaced, ‘if that’s what you’re getting at. She’s much too sweet. I’d give it at least –at the very least –two dates before I even touched her.’
Wesley paused, then added –for the sake of accuracy, ‘By that I mean sexually.’
Ted was so appalled by what Wesley was telling him (I mean Eileen was an
angel.
Eileen was a goddess. She was Gaia. A Madonna. A mother figure. And… And
married.
Irretrievably. He really couldn’t… he simply… ) that even Wesley found his brave –if unobtrusive –show of old-fashioned moral outrage difficult to ignore. He tipped his head to one side, flipping a stray lock of hair from his eye.
‘I have a reputation,’ he explained boredly, ‘for sleeping with librarians. But so bloody
what?
’ he self-justified. ‘It’s just a rumour. It’s a fucking
crock.
I’m gonna put this bird in the kitchen. Are you any good at plucking? Might you be staying on for something to eat later?’
‘I don’t…’ Ted frowned, conflictedly, ‘I still want…’ he followed Wesley a few steps down the corridor, reaching out his arm to him, resting his hand on his shoulder, ‘I’m just not entirely sure that this arrangement… I’m not confident that Katherine…’
‘I can handle her,’ Wesley grinned roguishly, purposefully misinterpreting the locus of his agitation, ‘and I’m touched by your concern, Ted,’ he hitched up his shoulder and pushed down his cheek towards Ted’s hand. Touched Ted’s fingers with it, ‘you soft-hearted creature…’
Then he quickly withdrew the cheek, scowling, ‘What is that?’
‘Sorry,’ Ted moved his hand, touching the offending fingers together, feeling them adhere, ‘rubber glue. Katherine had a puncture.’
‘Nowhere painful, I hope.’
Ted didn’t get the joke.
‘It’s just that…’ he returned brazenly –fearlessly –to his former subject, ‘it’s… What you might not realise is that Katherine tends to express everything she feels through…’
‘Let me guess,’ Wesley interrupted, pursing his thick lips, ‘through…’ he glanced around him, ‘through dirt? Through
chaos?
Is that it? No. No, she expresses stuff
sculpturally,
with mango pips and wire. What better way? Am I right? Or is it beansprouts? Or booze? Or the
heat?
Or is it… perhaps… could it… could it
possibly
be…’ Wesley mugged a parody of astonishment at him, ‘could it be
sex,
Ted?’
Ted regretfully abandoned this line of conversation, but he still couldn’t let Wesley get away from him entirely. He grabbed the loose sleeve of his mac. ‘Just while we’re alone, Wesley, you wouldn’t happen to know anything…’ he dropped his voice, guiltily, ‘about
computers,
would you? It’s… I have this rather pressing…’
‘Nope. Not a damn thing,’ Wesley lied guilelessly, ‘but…’ he thought for a moment –picturing Arthur in his mind’s eye, very solidly, for some reason –‘but I think I might know somebody…’ His thoughts suddenly drifted, ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’ Ted frowned, confounded.
‘I
like
her brutality.’
Ted frowned deeper, still not following.
‘Katherine’s. Her brutality. I like it. I find it… I find her endearing.’
‘The thing is, Wesley,’ Ted tried again, ‘it’s all much more… more
complicated
than you’re actually…’
‘What is?’
‘This situation. With Katherine. And Canvey. There’s a local journalist –a man called Bo, who used to play tennis, professionally –and he wants to know… and he doesn’t… well, he might make things a little tricky for her if I don’t… he sort of
implied…
he…’
Ted tried his damnedest to clarify things. It wasn’t easy. ‘And then there’s Dewi…’
‘Ted, Ted,
Ted,
’ Wesley crooned, brushing his delicately insistent fingers away, ‘let’s talk about all this stuff later, shall we? Would you have a
heart?
My arms are breaking.’
He started walking.
Ted gulped, ‘But at least… Could you…’
Mary Mother of Bloody…
Wesley spun around, scowling, ‘What?’
Ted flinched at the scowl, ‘I just… I only wondered whether…’
‘
What?
’
‘Well, whether it was true about the pond. All that stuff about… all those stories about… about the pond.’
If it was true, then at least that would be… That would mean…
At least that might make everything…
Wesley paused for a split second. He plainly didn’t like this question. He tried not to… had it been anybody else he would’ve –as a matter of course –he would’ve refused an answer. All this
stuff
from the past… the way it
haunted
him… the
boredom…
but Ted was…
The poor sod.
‘It’s all true, Ted,’ he told him gently, ‘every stupid detail. Only not quite so pretty, and a little bit more –as life invariably is –a little bit more… more
messy.
’
‘Just so long as…’
Ted leaned against the wall, exhausted. Closing his eyes. Weak with relief.
Wesley frowned at him for a moment, then shrugged, turned, and strolled off down the corridor, still clutching the bird to him, his tired mind (God, the way… the way that poor bird
fought…
the way it
buckled
when… ) slowly switching tracks, like a heavy goods train, redirecting itself, gradually, to sternly focus on the rather more pivotal issue of dinner.
Doc sat heavily on the pavement, his shoulders slumped forward, his knees pulled up tightly, sweating copiously, breathing emphatically; fagged out, knocked up,
spent,
entirely.
His old, overworked joints popped and creaked, like a distant fireworks party (hosted several miles away in a quiet, black valley). In fact, when he turned his head at one point, the snap, the
click –
like a rifle cocking – made Hooch, who stood to his right, politely holding out a plastic mug of tea, start back suddenly and slop the scalding liquid onto the tender skin between his right thumb and his index finger. He cursed, but silently, not wishing to distract – even for a second – from the sheer panorama of Doc’s exhaustion; its drama. Its pathos. Its out and out majesty.
Doc had already yanked off his mud-encrusted boots – tossing them hastily onto the grass verge behind him – and was now struggling to remove his chunky thermal socks from his heavily callused feet; slowly drawing the thick fibre clear of the fragile skin, paying special attention to the delicate areas where old blisters – and new – leaked sticky plasma into the thick woollen knit and formed a kind of glutinous bond there.
When the first sock finally came away completely –
victory! –
Dennis trotted over and ploughed his keen nose into it. Doc knocked him back, expostulating gruffly, then tucked the sock firmly into a battered boot. He did the same – moments later – with the second sock, then gently wiggled his ten pulverised toes, quietly conducting a grim inspection of them.
It was a dark, dark night. But Doc was not dark. He was radiant. His mundane labours were being grandly illuminated by an
old-fashioned streetlight. He sat under it, dwarfed by the lofty grandeur of its wrought-iron spine, its generous yellow areola; like a pixie perched squatly under a supernatural buttercup; his breath vaporising around him into a soft golden floss, his generous figure compacted into bright, abstract blocks: sentimental as a Hogarth, stark as a Hopper.
He was whacked. He’d had
enough.
Even Dennis was showing signs of trauma (after his recent tragic cuffing), dramatically collapsing onto his side in the gutter, then jumping up, with a growl, as a large jeep rumbled past them.
Police.
A whirling flash of sapphire suddenly rotated – in a delirious foxtrot – with Doc’s own dizzy nimbus of gilded amber.