Behindlings (30 page)

‘Oh it’s a
gift
now, is it? D’you hear that, Bron? D’you hear that?’ Katherine raised her husky voice (and her pale hand, correspondingly; holding it high in the air, palm turned ceiling-wards, like an alabaster juggler) to include an –as yet –invisible caged animal in their conversation. ‘He calls me a
cunt,
Bron, he leaves a lamb’s tail behind him with
no
explanation, he steals my mango-stone creature, he messes with my hydrangea. And now this: a magnificent wild water-bird
slaughtered
for supper.’

‘Cunt?’ Wesley frowned, bemusedly (falling at the first fence –refusing all the others). ‘You’ve lost me there.’

Katherine paused for a moment, caught slightly off balance.

‘Was Dick an ancestor, then?’ Wesley queried, returning dutifully to his plucking (the only trace of implicit innuendo in this question evinced by the slight arching of his left eyebrow).

‘Dick who?’ Katherine scowled.

‘Turpin. I saw that huge pub named after him up on the motorway.’

‘
A
road,’ she demurred, ‘and there’s no real connection. Our ancestors were Dutch. The name was… was bastardised.’

‘From what?’

Katherine paused, wavering.

‘Brouwer.’

She pronounced it softly but with faultless inflections.

‘Oh yes,’ Wesley nodded, ‘yes, the phonetic link’s
very
explicit.’

Katherine poked out her tongue at him. Her tongue was long and deliciously pink.

‘
Ouch,
’ Wesley suddenly shoved his thumb into his mouth (as if her spiteful tongue had pricked him there), ‘this thing’s a tough old pluck…’ he sucked at it, thoughtfully, ‘although you’d think I’d be used to it; I’ve been living on seabirds since late November.’ He drew the reddened thumb from his lips and studied the pad, critically. ‘I was camping down in Camber,’ he looked up. ‘Ever been there?’

‘Never.’

Katherine shrugged her shoulders and lifted her jaw (projecting a steadfast impression of mulish obduracy). But there was a twinkle –he could sense it –lost in the ivory lamina of her skin, somewhere; the base of her throat, the tiny, fleshy pleats in the crook of her arm, or wedged tightly under a dirty finger nail, maybe (she had capable hands –the finger-pads criminally printed with thick slicks of black bike oil, the cuticles ragged and cygnet-grey).

When Wesley pulled his thumb free, a small piece of down remained just above his lip.

‘The Dutch have…’ he returned to his former subject, readjusting the heron expertly on his knee, ‘an extremely…’ he felt the tickle under his nose and scratched at it; the feather shifted a couple of millimetres, ‘a very troubled history in this area, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’

Katherine focussed in on the feather, pointedly. He caught a sidelong glimpse of her face, ‘Brought over to save this joyless crap-hole from the ravages of the sea –to build dykes –seventeenth century, or thereabouts. But were
slightly
too good at it, so –in the true spirit of British Hospitality –got treated like absolute
shit
ever after…’

He gave her a significant look, ‘I can only guess it must be he… hered…’ he sneezed, ‘… irary.’

He shook his head, snorting brazenly.

Katherine merely scowled (the Dutch stuff held no interest for her. Why should it? She was the mistress of her own destiny) and picked up her glass of liquor. But before she could sip at it, she sniffed (a lean white rabbit cordially inspecting a juicy sprig of peppery chard), put the glass down, pulled an old tissue from the cuff of her sleeve, and dabbed softly at her nose with it.

Wesley observed this apparently commonplace act with a quiet but still palpable satisfaction.
Ah yes.
She was duplicating. He was inveigling.

Katherine quickly shoved the tissue away and then defiantly topped up her drink. She took a large mouthful of it, tossed it back and swallowed, her ash-smoke eyes watering as she straightened her head again.

In the furthest reaches of the kitchen, meanwhile, a subterranean rustling –prompted, perhaps, by the glass and the bottle’s tinkling –made Wesley abandon his plucking for a moment and twist around on his stool.

Where did that spring from, exactly?

In a roomy cage balanced precariously on a butcher’s block in the far corner, he saw a large grey rodent lazily emerging from a pile of loose wood shavings, peering around him (eyes like immaculate cobs of smokeless coal), blinking, then yawning (one of those long, unimaginably thin-mouthed rodent yawns). Scratching his ear. Grooming.

Bron.
Katherine’s chinchilla.

Wesley inspected this creature with the cool, level gaze of an experienced butcher. Plump, but mainly fur. Large eared. Betailed. Exquisitely bewhiskered; stark, white antenna, straight as power lines, centred on his nose, dynamically oscillating.

He chuckled, picked up the heron’s slack neck, supported its head in his bad hand and waggled it provocatively at the sleepy rodent. The chinchilla stared back at the heron, blankly, its two front legs held delicately poised in the air.

‘Would a heron predate on him out in the wild d’you reckon?’ Wesley queried, mischievously.

‘There’s only one merciless predator in this kitchen,’ Katherine countered sharply, ‘and it certainly isn’t lying dead across your knee.’

Wesley stopped his idle waggling to inspect the rodent more closely. The rodent, in turn, inspected Wesley. ‘Is that a male rodent you have there?’

‘Why?’

‘Because he seems to be…’

The rodent was masturbating.

‘Bron likes to touch himself,’ Katherine interrupted defensively, ‘it’s no big deal. He finds it comforting.’

‘Not an unusual predeliction,’ Wesley concurred, ‘but Good
God
woman,’ he pointed at the creature accusingly, ‘in the fucking
kitchen?
’

The chinchilla (as though chastened by Wesley’s finger) released his genitalia and bounded over to a small plastic tray in the corner of his enclosure. There he began digging –sand flew violently in every direction –and finally, rolling.

‘Now what’s he doing?’

‘He’s digging, you fool. He has a sand tray. He’s South American.’

‘And you think South Americans
like
to dig, as a broad generalisation?’

‘The Aztecs:’ Katherine didn’t falter, ‘legendary excavators.’

‘Infamous,’ Wesley conceded.

The rodent shook himself clean and then dutifully recommenced his self-abusing.

‘Bron,’ Wesley muttered, mulling the name over, trying but failing to make a connection.

Katherine began hunting around for her cigarettes. She eventually located a packet in the cutlery drawer. She tore it open and drew one out.

‘Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’

She stuck two cigarettes into her mouth, strolled over to the gas oven, pressed the ignition button, fiddled with a knob on the hob and bent over.

Wesley watched her, with interest, plucking on, blindly; two thirds of the heron’s chest area now all but bare. Katherine lit both cigarettes, took one out of her mouth, padded over and placed it between Wesley’s lips.

‘You have…’ she leaned in close to him –

Violets

‘… a little piece of fluff…’

She plucked it off.

‘There.’

She returned to her place by the kitchen cupboards and lounged against the worksurface. Wesley dangled the cigarette loosely on
his lip, barely inhaling on it. He glanced over towards the cage again. ‘Did you think to light one up for the little fella?’ he enquired, ‘I think he’ll be needing one shortly.’

‘I am…’ Katherine spoke with an especial languor, banging her rump sharply against the cutlery drawer, ‘I am
killed
by your wit.’ She thought quietly for a while, then added, ‘… and I’m certain there’s something Biblical about not eating predators. In Leviticus or somewhere…’

Wesley refused to rise to her.

‘Flesh is flesh,’ he pronounced flatly, ‘there can be no moral hierarchy when it comes to murder. But if you insist on such a thing –if there
has
to be –then this lovely creature would surely be at the top of it.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Of course: ancient, almost starving, very nearly dead from the cold already…’ He fingered the puny bare flesh on the chest, ‘no meat here to speak of.’

‘Had I only known…’ Katherine drew deeply on her cigarette, ‘I could’ve killed us a robin or a goldfinch or a rare species of woodpecker –fried it up in batter, for a tasty little starter…’

Wesley lifted the heron’s wing, took out his knife and cut firmly into it. He sawed for a few seconds until it came free (the cruel sound of bone shattering), then he opened it out, like a fan. ‘Goldfinches migrate in the winter,’ he informed her. ‘What do you think?’

Even Katherine found it difficult not to be impressed by the wing’s unfolding; by its bright and flawless close-knit construction. Wesley attacked the second one. He removed it –after a brief struggle –then placed them both, side-by-side, on the table-top.

He looked around him. On the floor close to his feet –stuffed into an old half tea-crate –were a pile of shells, some mouldering sheafs of wheat (semi-weaved into a dolly) and two coils of wire; one brass, and thin, the other steel and thicker.

He grabbed the steel wire, cut off a long segment with his knife and rapidly threaded one end –in and out, in and out –through the top strut of the left wing.

Katherine watched him intently, her mouth slightly open.

‘Don’t just
gape,
’ Wesley reprimanded, ‘loosen your clothing and come on over.’

She didn’t move initially. She continued inspecting him for any casual indication of cursory derision –

Nothing

– so she took a last puff on her cigarette, balanced it, carefully, facing inwards, between the two taps on her stainless steel sink and slowly walked over.

‘Katherine Turpin,’ she muttered (her reputation preceding her, like a series of bright ripples in a shallow puddle of dirty water), ‘game for anything.’

‘Kneel down for me.’

She frowned. She rested her hands on her hips, briefly. Then she knelt –her face glowing –before him.

‘Good.’

Wesley carefully inspected Katherine’s apricot layers. He removed the first two (they came away easily; the silky wools massed, slithered, formed warm piles on the floor) then paused ruminatively when he reached the third and fourth (the first two’d had sleeves, the others had been casually doctored –the sleeves torn away, and the collars –so that the frayed edges which remained tickled lightly at her throat and shoulders).

Underneath these half-altered items she wore –he smiled when he saw it –an old-fashioned 1930s peach bodice. Loose-ish. Under that, an old, ill-fitting, heavy-fabric, cream-coloured bra.

‘I’ll try not to scratch you,’ he told her, as he slowly threaded the wire across her collar bones, under each of her double straps, over and around the back of her. When he’d finished, the first wing hung limply at her shoulder. Almost apologetically.

He threaded in the second wing –this one with more difficulty because of his missing fingers –the cigarette still hanging slackly between his lips, his hands still bloody and feathery, then adjusted them both gently, touching her throat, her neck, her nape, her hair.

The whole process took many minutes. Katherine knelt –blissfully mute –goosebumps forming intermittently.

(He was very dark. Very handsome. Like the bad character in a children’s story. Shadowy, temporary, incomplete. She liked that. She… )

He finally drew back, removed the cigarette from between his lips, and held it away, conducting a thorough –and rather lordly –inspection of his achievements.

‘Katherine Turpin,’ he told her, ‘you are…’

Angelic wasn’t cutting it.

‘A little fairy. Playing on the compost heap. Kicking up the turnip heads. Trampling the cabbage leaves. Full of spite. Full of… full of
air…
’

‘
Tinkerbell,
’ he suddenly remembered –as if he’d only just met up with her after almost an eternity, ‘once she’d got all disillusioned,’ he pushed back Katherine’s hair –light as thistle-down against the broken skin of his mined hand, ‘all pissed-up and fucked-off and bitter.’

Katherine remained kneeling. She hunched her shoulders and smiled at him. She seemed to find this nasty fairy evocation particularly pleasing. Her wing’s reach was five foot at least. The wire pulled across –and pinkened –her breastplate. Her bra-straps creaked under the pressure of it. The wings shuddered mothily as she breathed in. Wesley breathed in too. He leaned forward and
inhaled
her. Her eyelids dropped. Her lips parted. She thought he might…

Ted walked in.

‘Oh Jesus bloody
Christ,
’ he stuttered, barely missing a wing with the door.

‘Hi Ted,’ Wesley was unmoved, ‘what do you reckon?’

‘She…’ Ted gawped at her. Smears of blood on her neck. Wings. He could see her… her bra. Bad fitting. One breast half-slipping out beneath it. Like… like…

Tripe.

Ted didn’t understand women. Not at all.

Katherine reached out her pale arm, took the cigarette from between Wesley’s fingers and smoked on it herself. She stared deeply into his vile, sage eyes. The wings fell lop-sided.

Wesley liked this even better.

‘You are fallen,’ he announced.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Katherine countered.

Ted cleared his throat

I’m such a… such a lump

I’d hate to spoil the…’

I’m such a…

‘but I think there might be…’

The heron’s torso lay across the kitchen table, a bloodied embankment, between himself and Wesley. Wesley was sitting on a stool, remarkably self-contained, plucking away again, vigorously –
Remember the pond.

Katherine clambered to her feet, looking around –slightly dazed –for her glass on the counter, finding it, drinking from it, her wings slipping further.

‘Spit it out,’ Wesley said.