Читать книгу Behindlings - Nicola Barker - Страница 9

Look for love Where liquid is solid, Where 62 fell (46 still to fight for) From Beaver to Antelope, From Feather to Bear, Kick your heels, sucker, And find nothing there

Dewi came back early for lunch, each weekday, just so that he could watch her. She arrived home at twelve fourteen –twelve seventeen if she stopped to buy smokes on the way –twelve nineteen if there was a queue at the newsagents. She rode a fold-up bike. A Brompton. Tiny wheels. Bright red. It was three years old.

In winter she wore brown lace-up boots and grey woollen mittens: an irresistible combination which never failed to bring the sting of tears to his eyes. He could not think why. It was just one of those things.

She made him feckless and emotional. He was her fool. But he took strength from the fact that he was nobody else’s. In every other respect, he told himself –and others told him –he was a rational man of poise and depth and stature.

Floors were his business. Wooden floors. He prepared them. He restored them. He laid, sanded and varnished them. And he had a sideline in wooden decks, and sheds and verandahs, all of which he designed and then built himself, single-handedly.

He worked hard. Like a demon. He worked until his shoulders locked, until his knees buckled, until his feet swelled and his palms blistered. He believed in work and his work sustained him. It gave him purpose. It gave him nourishment. It gave him reason. And he, in turn, gave it everything.

He embraced activity the way a hungry man embraces his first cup of tepid soup in too many days: with both hands and great satisfaction. He took what he could and was always grateful for it. He had been raised that way: to be proud yet never haughty; to be particular yet never fussy.

He was an old-fashioned creature, by and large, but with exquisitely modern parameters. He liked to do things simply and well, using the same traditional techniques his father had taught him, but twisted, very gently, into the realm of the contemporary. His father had been a boat-builder, just west of Rhyl. His grandfather, too, before him.

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.

Only Josephine –who was slightly more observant than the others –saw that Dewi’s huge hands were shaking. Not with fear. Nor passion. Anger? No. And not rage, either… It was something else. Something softer. Restraint, maybe? No. Not restraint. Not exactly… Her eyes widened, suddenly. Could it be? Could it be sympathy?

Sympathy?

‘Oi. What’s that, then?’

Josephine started, surprised by the sudden, unexpected proximity of the small boy, Patty, who had silently materialised at her shoulder. And while she could barely stand to drag her eyes away from Dewi –his sandy brows, his smooth voice, his magnificent fingers –Patty seemed hardly to have noticed the intense altercation between the two other men.

‘What’s that?’ he repeated. ‘Is it food?’

Jo looked down. In her right hand she still held the grease-stained paper bag from the bakery. ‘It’s a doughnut,’ she stammered. ‘Hand it over,’ the boy ordered.

She passed it to him, silently. Patty snatched the bag and rammed his fist inside of it. He was hungry.

Dewi, meanwhile, in that slightest –that shortest –that briefest of interludes, had swiftly taken his leave of them. Jo turned and stared after him, her whole heart scythed. Beautiful, beautiful Dewi, she murmured, her chin lifting, her pupils dilating; beautiful, beautiful Dewi, standing right there, just in front of me, and as the cruel winter sky above is my witness, he didn’t even know.

‘If you love to sew so much, why are you working as an estate agent?’

‘What?’ Ted did a double-take.

They were crossing the road together, strolling directly towards the four people on the opposite pavement.

A fifth was just joining them. Another man, grossly overweight and wearing thin, green, tie-dyed trousers with a black and red striped mohair Dennis the Menace jumper. His name was Shoes. Wesley knew him well, but as he approached, his face showed no inkling of recognition. Not for Shoes. Not for Doc. Not for any of them.

His eyes hiccoughed slightly, however, at the sight of Hooch’s hat; the incongruously cuddly logo, then they focussed straight in on the girl. He stepped up onto the kerb.

‘Who said anything about sewing?’ Ted asked quietly. Wesley didn’t answer. He was standing directly in front of Josephine.

‘Someone must be paying you,’ he murmured silkily, inspecting her face which was plain –like he’d imagined –but with something about the mouth, the chin, that seemed oddly exceptional. A firmness. A roundness. She was a Jersey Royal, he decided. Not your average potato. She was small and smooth and seasonal. Her hazel eyes were liquid, like a glass of good cask whisky mixed with water.

‘Pardon?’ She looked quite astonished to see him. So close.

‘Someone must be paying you. You don’t look like the others. You aren’t like them.’

‘I’m Jo from Southend,’ Jo found herself saying.

‘I don’t care where you live,’ Wesley said, ‘you’re wasting your time here. You won’t find what you’re looking for. Go back to Southend…’ his voice dropped, unexpectedly, ‘while you still can. D’you hear?’

He turned –not even waiting for an answer –then he paused, ‘You have jam,’ he said, ‘on your sweatshirt.’

Jo looked down. ‘I was eating a doughnut,’ she muttered, trying to lift off the worst of it with her thumb.

Wesley was already walking.

‘How did you know?’ Ted asked, quickly catching up, ‘about the sewing?’

‘Ah,’ Wesley touched the tip of his nose mysteriously with his glossy stump. ‘You smelled it?’

‘When I picked up your jacket,’ Wesley demurred, ‘I noticed the handmade label. Beautifully finished. Just like the original. And you were comforting yourself,’ he continued, ‘earlier, when we were walking, by rattling that bunch of keys. It reminded me of the sound of a machine…’ he paused, ‘and I couldn’t help noticing how you felt the curtain fabric in Katherine’s house. Almost without thinking. And the material on the cushion covers. Plus you have two strange calluses on your index fingers. It all seemed pretty… well, pretty conclusive, really.’

‘Nobody knows that I sew,’ Ted whispered, at once amazed and conspiratorial, ‘except my Great Aunt who taught me. You’re the first. You must promise not to tell.’

‘Tell?’ Wesley chuckled. ‘Who would I tell? More to the point, why would I tell them?’

Ted held on tight to his briefcase, saying nothing, but with his knuckles showing white, his lips silently enunciating, his nose gently shining. He was panicked, for some reason.

Wesley glanced sideways at him and felt a sudden, fierce glow of satisfaction –as if a blow torch had just been lit inside of him. This is how I become powerful, he thought, turning, casually, and glancing back at the girl again.

She had her jammy thumb in her mouth and she was sucking on it. But she wasn’t –as he’d anticipated –staring after him. Instead she was looking behind her, towards a small, scruffy, ivy-covered bungalow with an inappropriately large wooden verandah to the front of it.

On the verandah stood a huge, square man, staring straight back at him –eyes like arrows, poison tipped –with the kind of crazy intensity which implied not only dislike –or pique –or bile –or irritation, even, but hatred.

Hate. Pure. Clear. 100% proof. Strong as poteen.

Perhaps it was a mistake to return here, Wesley mused idly. He glanced over at Ted whose lips were still working feverishly.

He smiled. What shall I give this man, he pondered, his mood instantly lightening; and what, I wonder, shall I extract from him?

He chuckled to himself, cruelly, then pulled his two hands from his trouser pockets, wiggled his four remaining fingers –it was cold, it was too damn cold –puckered his lips, swung out his arms and walked boldly onwards, expertly whistling the chorus to When the Saints Go Marching In, while gradually –almost imperceptibly –speeding up his pace, so that he might stride along jauntily, in time.