Behindlings (46 page)

‘Not a great fan,’ Wesley repeated.

He blew on the soup then knocked it back. He poured her a cup.

‘Did you see his tattoos, Josephine Bean?’ he asked, offering it to her, cordially. ‘Weren’t you terribly impressed?’

Josephine took the soup. She sniffed it. She nodded. Her affirmation was suitably non-specific. Wesley grabbed the sandwich container. He pulled off its tupperware lid.

‘For your information, Josephine,’ he said, ‘I have a tupperware container
exactly
like this one in my rucksack.’

Josephine took a sip of the soup. Almost burned her tongue on it (it was extremely salty, but wonderfully hot). Then she took another sip, cradled her hands around the cup and allowed its steam to warm her nose, her chin, her cheek.

Wesley snaked out his hand and plucked a stray dock leaf from her lap.

‘Dock,’ he said, ‘I was about to go out and gather some of that.’

He screwed the soft leaf up, menacingly, and tossed it at the windscreen. Her side.

He was –

Bully

– intimidating her.

And quite successfully –

I don’t care, I don’t care, just so long as he stays here

She cleared her throat. ‘He had… he… Shoes had a strange one on his stomach,’ she said, struggling to maintain a rather puny sense of decorum, ‘a very… very strange tattoo.’

‘Really.’

Wesley wasn’t interested. He was inspecting the sandwiches.

‘Salmon paste,’ he muttered, peeling one open. He pushed it into his mouth, whole, and peeled open a second. ‘Chocolate spread,’ he said, through his mouthful.

She turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised.

‘Not together,’ he clarified, sensing her sudden interest, ‘obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ she echoed, still watching him, pointedly.

‘
What?
’

He scowled at her, his jaw working resentfully.

She shrugged, ‘I just… I only thought they might be
exactly
like the kind that
you
eat, usually, or… or something like that.’

Wesley jumped back, sharply, as if she’d burned him with her wit. Her sarcasm. ‘You’re a fucking
razor,
’ he said.

They were both quiet for a while. Wesley devoured the second sandwich.

‘Hangman,’ Jo eventually continued (once she’d mustered the requisite stamina).

‘Pardon?’ He glanced at her, still chewing.

‘Two words. Seven and five. Like in the game you play on paper. And the little figure hanging there on the gallows with everything intact but a…’ she paused, swallowed.

Wesley picked up a third sandwich and took a bite. Spoke with his mouth full, ‘But a
what?
My God it’s like squeezing blood from a stone with you, Bean.’

‘But a
hand,
’ she said, ‘a right hand.’

She glanced towards his –held hers up –took a final sip of
the soup then passed it back. He delivered a scorching glance as he grabbed the cup, ‘You really love all this stuff, huh? All this fatuous, this… this pointless riddle-puzzle
cack.
’

Jo didn’t answer.

He shook his head, ‘I never thought anyone would fall for it –least of all anyone remotely intelligent. A
girl
for fuck’s sake…’

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?’

Her eyes flew open again, ‘Sorry?’

(She hadn’t realised that she’d closed them. That was half the shock.)

‘The librarian told me what he took out. But he’s not a great reader, Shoes.’ Wesley grabbed the discarded tissue paper and gently wound it around her arm again. When he’d finished, he carefully pulled her sleeve down over the top.

‘So which book was it?’

Josephine pushed her hand down the side of her chair. She retrieved the book. He took it from her. She stared at his face –

Looking for clues

Can’t…

Can’t help myself

– but he gave nothing away.

‘There’s this ridiculously prevalent myth about Louis L’Amour…’ he said, flicking idly through it, ‘that his whole existence as a writer-hero of the American West has been fabricated. That he isn’t American at all. That he’s English. That he lives in Stansted or Woking or somewhere. All complete bullshit, by the way. Because he was the real thing; hobo, writer, marine, cattle rancher, explorer. Entirely self-educated. Bare-knuckle boxer. I love all that stuff.’

He slapped it shut and passed it back to her.

‘Good choice,’ he said.

She took the book and pushed it back down the side of her seat. ‘I don’t know much about Westerns,’ she said, ‘but apparently the Estuary is meant to bear a strong resemblance to the American…’

‘It’s the English psyche,’ Wesley interrupted, ‘we love to devitalise –suck out the sap –it’s our most fundamental instinct. We mistrust passion. We think it’s a sign of weakness or deviance. And we loathe sincerity. It makes us uneasy…’

He shrugged, ‘It’s an automatic gut reaction, a knee-jerk thing. And it’s only because we don’t actually know who we are, because we’re all spent as a nation. Even a cow understands its own essence better than we can –understands its
cowness –
but we don’t have a clue. We don’t know what it is to be
human.
And
we sorely resent all those creatures, those nationalities, those non-conformists who do.’

‘D’you reckon L’Amour would be less of a hero if he
did
write all his stuff in a bedsit in Woking?’ she asked, idly touching her arm where he’d touched it before.

‘That’s a bullshit question,’ he yawned, ‘you obviously haven’t been paying attention.’ He scratched his head then collapsed back on his seat. ‘I’m going to sleep,’ he said, ‘turn off the heater, put my jumper and coat back on, unzip the sleeping bag, we’ll need to share it.’

Then he switched the light off, shifted onto his right hip and turned slightly to the left. ‘I’ll take on the doorhandle,’ he told her, grudgingly, ‘if you don’t mind the gearstick.’

Thirty-three

‘It’s so damn
Catholic,
’ Katherine told him, ‘the way you always clean your plate off like that.’

Ted put down his fork, looked up. ‘I don’t always,’ he said, a hint of childish rebellion entering his voice, ‘and it has nothing to do with being…’