Behindlings (7 page)

He understood wood completely: sheathing, siding, clapboard, cord; walnut, ebony, hickory, beam. He
understood
wood.

He liked to recycle. He could rip the back and the belly out of an old house (he had deals with local demolition men; they knew his number), the doors, the bannisters, the stairs, the pelmets even (he’d pick the corpse clean and leave it shining –he was meticulous as an ant), and then he’d transform what he’d retrieved into something new.

He tolerated the fashions in flooring, the fads: the pale finishes, the beeswax, the crazy veneers. He was no wood snob, although he knew perfectly well what he preferred, what his tastes were. But he kept his opinions to himself. He was subtle and enigmatic; as discreet as a shadow.

He did not smile secretly over the things people did or said, desired or demanded. He could not sneer. He had mouth and cheeks and chin, like other folk, but no spare space on his face for duplicity. He was straight as the shortest distance between two points.

And yet, for all of his sensitivity, he was not an especially sad or bleak or ruminative character (although others might well consider he had reason to be). He did not mull or muse or muddle miserably through. He was quiet, often. He was calm yet never vacant. He
was as sweet and clear as pure rainwater in an ancient well. But it took a special little pail, a strong rope, care, steadfastness, persistence and an awful, long, deep, hard drop before you might finally discover him.

Occasionally, others’ voices echoed down his walls, their cries reverberated, and sometimes pebbles or pennies disturbed the still calm of his surface, made him ripple, briefly. But true and natural light never reflected on his heart. Not a glimpse of it. Not even a glimmer.

He was dark inside, although not in a bad way. He was plain, brown and clean; like peat or coya bark, or fine, rich, fertilizer.

He was just a man, in other words, and nothing less.

They’d been joined by a fourth. The third had been a boy who –Jo couldn’t help thinking –had dramatically overstepped the mark by strolling into the small paved garden, ringing on the bell and then repeatedly hammering with his fist at the window. She’d been alarmed by this behaviour. She’d presumed some invisible rule-book. She’d anticipated complex codes of practice, margins, restrictions, limitations. She’d expected
restraint.

Doc also watched the boy closely –a submissive Dennis sitting morosely at his heels –but said and did nothing. When a fourth man arrived though (in his fifties and looking –Jo couldn’t curb the crassness of her assessment –an absolute bloody Trainspotter with his long, grey face, thick glasses, waterproof beanie bearing a preposterous logo –a little fat koala-like creature with the word
Gumble
written underneath it –plastic rucksack and binoculars), she finally heard Doc mention the boy’s impropriety, and in tones of fairly severe disapproval. They called the boy Patty.

‘Will you say anything, Doc?’ the fourth man asked, gazing over towards Patty bemusedly. ‘He’s absolutely
trashing
that hydrangea.’

Doc shrugged, ‘Not my responsibility, Hooch. I’m hardly the boy’s keeper.’

The two of them dumbly ruminated upon Patty’s continuing antics for a while, before, ‘Ay
ay!
’ the fourth man whispered,
clumsily adjusting his glasses on the flat, elongated (almost turtlelike) bridge of his snout and squinting furtively across Doc’s right shoulder blade. ‘It looks like somebody else might be squaring up to take the initiative.’

As he spoke he yanked off his rucksack and shoved his hand deep inside of it. He withdrew a pad and a pen.

The enterprising person to whom Hooch referred had silently emerged from the small, rather scruffy-looking mint-green bungalow behind them. He was a man; stem-seeming, handsome, sallow-skinned. A big, brazen creature. Wide-jawed. Gargantuan. A
moose.

As they watched, he emerged fully into the sharp morning light, squinting antagonistically into the high winter sky like some kind of hostile, nocturnal organism, turned and slammed his front door (it clicked shut, then immediately swung back open) clumped rapidly over his large, well-constructed American-style verandah, banged down some thick, wooden steps, marched across his wildly Amazonian front garden, out through his gate (again, although he closed it with a satisfying clatter, only seconds later it was yawning insolently behind him), strode along the pavement –passing literally within inches of the three of them –and dashed straight over the road, narrowly avoiding a scooter and a small, battered yellow Volkswagen (the Volkswagen swerving and sounding its horn) without so much as a word, a squeak, a
grunt
of acknowledgement.

As he moved, Jo noted, a spray of something chalk-like –a fine, dusty aura –seemed to follow in his wake. When she looked harder, she noticed that he wore ancient trousers and a threadbare jumper, both of which were saturated with a diffuse, pale, powdery substance. Flour? She frowned. No. Not white enough. Grit? Nope. Something infinitely lighter. She sniffed the air, cat-like, after his passing. Ah. That was it.
Sawdust.

The man-moose, meanwhile, was entering the bungalow’s garden. He was marching across the brick parquet. He was grabbing Patty by the arm. He was towering above him.

Jo drew a deep, gulping breath –as if she’d just been shoved from a mile-high diving board –then gazed down at her shoes, slowly exhaling.
Birkenstocks.
Brown plastic leather-look. Square-toed. Lace-ups. Cruelty-free.

She found herself inspecting the heel of her left shoe (abstractly observing how the tread was far more worn on the right hand side), while simultaneously straining her two sharp ears for any vaguely audible scraps of conversation.

What could he possibly be
saying?

Initially a couple more cars passed by, drowning out everything, and then –
damn
him, what
timing –
Doc started talking.

‘Well that’s certainly gone and done it,’ he murmured, turning to Hooch conspiratorially. ‘Happen to know whose house that is?’

Doc’s voice, Jo felt (perhaps even for her benefit), was slightly louder than it had been previously.

‘I don’t know,’ Hooch answered, staring wide-eyed at his mentor, opening his pad and priming his pen in sweet anticipation. ‘Should I, Doc?’

Jo silently noted the obsequious way in which Hooch repeatedly used the Old Man’s name in conversation.

‘Katherine. Katherine Turpin. Remember her?’

Doc pronounced this feminine appellation only seconds before the huge, dusty, moose-like man echoed the self-same three syllables himself during the course of his own conversation.

Jo glanced up from her shoes.

‘Katherine who?’ Hooch quizzed.

‘Katherine
Turpin.
’

‘Turpin?’

‘As in
Dick,
’ Doc said.

‘It rings a bell, Doc,’ Hooch muttered, glancing sideways at Jo for the first time, as if supremely protective of the information he was gleaning. He suddenly lowered his voice, presumably hoping to encourage Doc to do the same, ‘And the connection?’

‘The walks book,’ Doc announced, sounding justly proud of his coup, ‘the section on Canvey. All that crazy stuff about boundaries. I never understood a word of it…’ he chuckled, ‘nor did Wes himself, more than likely. But this is where she lives. That much I am sure of.’

Hooch chewed on the end of his finger for a moment, frowning, then suddenly his monolithic mien brightened. ‘Of
course,
’ he squeaked, jabbing his biro into the air with a quite savage delight, ‘of course of
course.
You mean
Katherine.
You mean
the
Katherine
Turpin. What on earth was I thinking? You mean Katherine the
whore…
’

Hooch proclaimed this slanderous defamation with all the uninhibited joy of a miserly man who unexpectedly finds his long-lost gold cap tucked inside a three-week-old carton of pasta salad.

‘
Sssh!
’

Even Doc had the good grace to seem embarrassed by Hooch’s complete want of delicacy. Dewi and the kid were currently well within earshot, standing on the opposite kerb, impatiently waiting for a van to pass. He scowled, quickly pushing his pager into his coat pocket –as if to free his hands for something (combat, possibly) –but then held them limply by his sides, open, loose.

They crossed the road. Dewi roughly yanked Patty up onto the grass verge in front of them. ‘Is the boy with you?’ he asked Doc, proffering the child, who dangled as weakly in Dewi’s huge grip as a faded old bathrobe on a big, brass doorknob.

‘The boy?
Mine?
Good Lord, no,’ Doc exclaimed, lifting his hands and smiling as if this was possibly the most preposterous supposition he had ever yet been party to.

The boy,
his?

Patty stared up at Doc, unblinking, his head yanked sideways by Dewi’s tight grip. He was just a boy. He had no agenda. There was nothing unspoken or sly or resentful in his gaze. But even so, almost out of nowhere, Doc’s smile suddenly faltered. His hands froze, mid-air. His lips twisted. Because he had indeed been the father of a son, once.

A father. This strangely alien yet acutely painful notion hit him like a karate kick. Two kicks. In the kidneys. It winded him. How on earth could he have forgotten? Even passingly. His own flesh and blood, his
boy,
dead. A too short life, curtailed, emptied, drained, exhausted…

Doc’s loose hands clenched, just briefly, as if he was seriously considering doing something wild and magnificent –venting his rage. Perhaps calling death or fate or destiny to task. Going five rounds with the bastards.
Pulping
them –but then they unclenched again and hung inertly.

Dewi didn’t notice Doc’s distress. It was all much too subtle. He was far too irritable. He turned to Jo. ‘What about you?’ he asked,
then paused for a moment to inspect her face more closely. He had mistaken her for a boy, possibly a brother. But she was a girl, and as if to prove it categorically, a fierce blush –like two clumsily upended measures of sweet cherry brandy –slowly stained the impeccable cream cotton tablecloth of her soft complexion.

Jo shrugged, burning inside, burning outside, utterly mortified, yet still silently mesmerised by the layers of dust which –close up –coated Dewi’s features and hung above either eyebrow like precarious hunks of soft, pale honeycomb.

‘Why should the kid belong to anybody?’ Hooch butted in –observing Doc’s temporary state of disquiet and feeling bad for him. ‘Why can’t he simply be here under his own steam?’

Dewi loosened his grip on the child –he couldn’t be much past eleven, at best, Jo calculated –and slowly drew closer to Hooch. Soon he stood only inches from him. He was a good foot taller, even hatless (if they’d suddenly begun slow-dancing, Jo couldn’t help imagining, then Hooch’s flat pate would’ve fitted with a reassuring snugness under Dewi’s jutting chin).

As it was, Hooch’s mean streak of a nose pointed with an almost stoat-like determination towards Dewi’s left nipple. Eye contact was not maintained –it was not desirable –it was barely even feasible.

Patty, for his part, instantly busied himself in trying to eradicate a large smear of dust from the arm of his cheap, shiny green bomber jacket. He slapped away at it, vigorously.

Doc, in turn (and somewhat to his discredit, under the circumstances), stared fixedly off to his left, towards the distant smudge of sea at the road’s end, as if he’d just received urgent word of an Armada.

Dennis –who’d stood up, initially, to sniff at Dewi’s trouser leg –sat down again, glanced up at Doc, tightened his eyes, drew his lips back into an apprentice snarl, shook his head and then
sneezed.

‘It’s very plain, my friend,’ Dewi murmured softly into the crown of Hooch’s slightly dented beanie, the curling vine of a Welsh accent suddenly twisting into audibility and looping with an almost unspeakable sincerity around each and every syllable, ‘that there are some things, some
important
things, which you don’t yet seem to know about Katherine Turpin.’

He inhaled deeply. ‘The first of these,’ he continued calmly, his voice deep and smooth as a stagnant loch, ‘is that I am her friend. I am her guardian. I am her self-appointed foot-soldier. It is a service that I perform for her out of loyalty and love and veneration. And while you’re at liberty to interpret my guardianship in any way you please,’ he smiled (it wasn’t friendly), ‘you might benefit from knowing that my name is Dewi and that I live in this bungalow…’ he pointed (somewhat gratuitously), ‘directly opposite her bungalow, and that if she ever troubled to ask me I would happily break my own two arms for her…’ a significant pause followed, ‘or anybody else’s,’ a further pause, ‘for that matter.’

Dewi took a small step backwards, down into the gutter, and nodded his head curtly, as if in parting. He half-turned. But then he thought better of it, stuck out his square chin and moved back up close again.

‘I trust,’ he intoned gently, his eyes still not meeting Hooch’s but focussing approximately a foot above his head, ‘I
hope
that you will refrain from pestering my Katherine. Or maligning her. Or troubling her. Because there has been far too much of that already. And I am very, very tired of it…

‘But if you do,’ he continued, his voice barely audible now (just a cool gust, an icy imprint), ‘then trust me when I say that I will hunt you down, that I will find you, that I will take you, that I will hold you, that I will squeeze you, that I will
smash
you. Because it would be no bother to me. It would be no trouble. It would be… it would be like plucking a stray feather from a duck-down pillow… see?’

Dewi held his dusty hands aloft. Huge hands. His index finger and thumb pinched lightly together. He blew an invisible feather into the air. Sawdust lifted from his lips and the tip of his nose. It was a beautiful gesture. Excessive. Baroque. Infinitely tender.

Hooch’s wise eyes followed those capable fingers, keenly, moistly, from behind their thick but clear bifocal lenses. He swallowed hard. He said nothing.