Behindlings (11 page)
He drew a deep breath, ‘I
am
here, however, to find out, to accrue, to
glean
information. And you are here to give it to me. Unless, that is…’ Bo’s eyebrows rose suggestively. His silence spoke volumes. Ted squirmed a little under the weighty pressure of all this quiet insinuation, but still he said nothing.
‘I mean that
is
the understanding between the two of us, currently?’
‘Yes,’ Ted finally murmured, breaking eye contact to inspect his
desktop, ‘it’s just that… in
retrospect
…’ he picked up the ruler and bent it virtually double, ‘in retrospect it seems like I wasn’t very well primed. Perhaps I should’ve been more aware of certain things –special areas of interest –to do with the competition. That kind of stuff.’
‘The Loiter.’
‘What?’
‘The
Loiter.
So where did you take him?’
‘Pardon?’
Ted looked up, guiltily. Bo was pressing his hands down hard onto his desk. He had knuckles like horse chestnuts.
‘I said
where
did you take him?’
‘It didn’t mention,’ Ted asked, swallowing nervously, his shoulders hunching, ‘on the internet?’
‘No. It listed the Furtherwick Road –this address, presumably –but that was all. The information’s always fairly sketchy. Everybody has stuff they want to keep to themselves. Even the informants. That’s the…’ he thought for a while, ‘… I guess that’s the
irony.
’
‘Well, we just…’ Ted paused, ‘we just walked down the road a way… we had a look around… took in the sights… uh #x2026;’ he cleared his throat, ‘looked at the school and stuff…’
‘You didn’t view any houses?’
‘
Houses?
’ Ted almost squawked. ‘No. Absolutely not. Absolutely no way did we view any houses. No,’ he crossed his legs, then his fingers, under the table, ‘it was all just… well, just simple lay of the land stuff, really… he needed to find his bearings… he said he wanted to… to
mooch
around… he said he was interested in geography… and pigeons… and birds’ feet, generally…’
As Ted laboriously belched up these unedifying informational gobbets (he had evasion written all over him. He was too genuine by a mile. Honest as a humble bunny.
More
honest), Mr Leo Pathfinder, in all his neat and tidy well-groomed glory, could be observed –a new moth, glistening, fresh from its pupa –silently emerging from the cloakroom behind them.
He pushed the door wide and posed dramatically in its sweep, his hair preposterously bouffant, his moustache quivering, his index finger raised and pressed firmly to his smiling lips in gentle warning.
Bo –who was facing him –saw Leo immediately, yet gave Ted no intimation of his silent re-entry. His eyes barely flickered from their minute inspection of Ted’s benign physiognomy.
‘I don’t know…’ Ted continued, now utterly immersed in what he was saying, ‘I mean I’m not
certain
if it’ll help you, but early on, when we were still in the office, Wesley told me some fascinating stuff about pigeon farming. He said that people prefer to cling to the idea that factory farming is a very modern thing, but in actual fact the Romans used to keep pigeons –and I mean literally thousands of them –inside these huge, nasty, airless…’
Bo said nothing, just continued to stare at him, focussing on his nose, especially. Ted took his silence as a sign of encouragement and so kept on talking.
Behind him, meanwhile, Pathfinder was on the move. He began to tiptoe, exaggeratedly (holding up his hands, as if scalded, lifting his feet in a crazy goose-step, like a deviant Lipizzaner), very quietly, very deliberately, over from the far wall.
‘Sometimes they’d clip their wings and break their legs so that the birds couldn’t move around too much. I mean if you can only
imagine…
’
Four foot away. Three foot. Two.
Then all at once, like an industrial rubberized, burgundy-bewhiskered Zebedee, Leo sprang –emitting an ear-splittingly wild yet eerily pitch-perfect yodel –and landed, seconds later, with both his hands, stiffened into a terrifying, claw-like rictus, clamped down hard onto poor Ted’s shoulders.
Ted jolted, he bucked, his eyes popped.
‘
WAH?
’
He kicked himself backwards –his swivel chair pivoting –and as he spun, his jaw jerked insanely like a low-budget skeleton on a funfair ghost-train. The wheels continued rolling and twisting. Twice he almost toppled, nearly taking Pathfinder with him. Leo was agile though, and sprang out, sideways.
‘
YES!
’ he bellowed.
The chair finally stalled –it stopped spinning –but Ted’s jowls continued juddering, his usually sallow complexion now the exact same hue as a sweet potato skin.
‘Oh fuck me, Ted, your
face,
’ Bo cackled, bending forwards and
placing both his hands flat onto the desk again.
‘Was it good?’ Leo panted, scurrying around to Bo’s side to get a better look. ‘Did I
kill
him?’
Ted’s breath came in nasty gasps as his hands, white knuckled and shaking, clung onto his knees. His cheeks were hollow, his tie skewed. The material on his trousers, several inches below his right thigh, had mysteriously darkened. Moisture. A tiny patch of it.
Ted gulped, flattened his hand, covered the stain, pushed himself up, turned and ran –scalded, staggering –into the close, steamy privacy of the tiny back cloakroom. He slammed the door behind him.
Outside they continued laughing. Leo laughed so hard that his mouth grew gummy.
‘I need
water,
’ he yelled joyously, ‘right
now
Teddy.’
Ted heard Leo shouting, but he didn’t move immediately. What a small room this is, he found himself thinking. His back was still jammed firmly against the door; his head, his hands, his heels, his buttocks, all hard up against it.
It was solid behind him. And reassuring.
His breath returned gradually. His palms stopped sweating. His eyes moved down slowly from their temporary refuge in the uncontentious angles of the ceiling, and turned, ineluctably, to catch the pitiful half-formed blur of his reflection in the mirror.
He gulped several times –his trembling lower lip curling down clownishly –then he reached out his hand –inhaling deeply, pushing his chin up, sticking his chest out –and hooked his shaking fingers around the smooth metal of the sink’s cold tap.
‘
Water,
’ he whispered quietly, resting his hand limply on the faucet for a moment, his damp, brown eyes scanning the room for a suitable receptacle to hold it in.
But then he froze. Because suddenly –out of nowhere –he was beset by a vision. And it was a queer vision. It was plush. It was singular; as strange and unexpected as it was outlandish.
Water. Yes.
Water.
A vision of a pond. A small pond. With a bayonet-toting regiment of green reeds on its periphery, white lilies the size of soup bowls floating effortlessly on its surface, exotic carp –in bright golds and oranges –twisting sinuously just underneath.
A pond. A
beautiful
pond. An image of infinite calm. A picture of pure serenity, of boundless peace, of wonderful –of endless –of
exceptional
tranquillity. An astonishingly complex biosphere, just… just
hanging in mid-air.
He closed his eyes for a while, felt a warm breeze on his skin carrying the scent of wild jasmine, heard the infernal gnats buzzing… So how on
God’s Earth,
he found himself thinking, do you set about stealing a pond? A
garden
pond?
His mind struggled to embrace the viability of such an undertaking –the logistical problems, the practical details, the horrible technicalities –and while it battled to do so, his fingers began cohering; his palm contracted (like a woodlouse, furling up, at the first sign of danger), his hand tightened, then squeezed, then twisted…
His eyes flew open as the tap began gushing; he smiled broadly, bent over, splashed his face in cool water, straightened up again, felt it drip off his chin, down his neck, onto his collar. He thought about Wesley –
Him
To steal a pond.
To steal an
antique
pond.
Now that was truly something.
There’s lamb and lynx and lion,
Yet no fowl and no fish, either,
Left on my terra firma.
So wait awhile –
Malinger –
And if you stay a loser,
Then plant your feet firmly on Daniel’s Candy
To find a pill that’s sweeter still,
A sugar far more bitter
Suddenly…
Huh-huh
HAH!
… having a little trouble…
Huh-huh
HAH!
… inhaling…
Huh-huh
Tired.
HAH!
Huh-huh
He was tiring. Had to regulate his…
HAH!
… breathing…
Huh-huh
Slow things down…
HAH!
… a little…
Almost always happened…
Huh-huh
… five hours…
Huh-huh
… in…
HAH!
Arthur checked his watch. Four and three…
Huh-huh
… quarters…
HAH!
Approximately.
Huh-huh
He checked it again. Four…
Huh-huh
… hours fifty…
HAH!
Precisely. There you go. Just as he’d predicted. Five hours. Only ten…
Huh-huh
… minutes…
Huh-huh
… under. Not bad going. Simply had to regulate…
Huh-huh
Had to focus. Had to stop pushing. Just…
HAH!
… cruise…
Huh-huh
… awhile. Just cruise. Just…
Okay.
Okay
Yes.
HAH!
And…
Phew!
… better.
Candy Island? Jeeeesus!
(Pulse was racing. Chest pumping.
Heart banging like… heart throbbing like… fragile-pink-shuddering-hairless-newborn-rodent…
Stop!
… rat…
Stop!…
fieldmouse…
Stop –
HAH! –
thinking!)
Huh-huh
Candy? What the heck was that all about, anyway? Yes he
knew
it was a nod to Defoe (Arthur hawked, then expertly spat the dense yet compact globule over his shoulder) but the actual
meaning of
the reference…
Huh-huh
… as Defoe used it, originally?
Of course – and this was the worst part – Wesley himself probably didn’t have the first…
HAH!
… idea about the phrase’s basic etymology. He was so damn slap-happy, so relentlessly superficial. A cunning magpie. A stinking plagiariser. And so
determinedly
cheerful about it. Such a blissful bloody…
HAH!
… philistine.
Arthur bent down abruptly to tighten one of his shoelaces –so abruptly, in fact, that the weight of his rucksack almost toppled him. He quickly stiffened his legs, his thighs, stretched out his arms; palms pushed forward –grumbling furiously –rapidly re-located his centre of gravity, tapped the ground lightly with his fingertips –just to make certain –then yanked hard at the lace and firmly re-tied it.
Wasn’t the poor –Huh-huh –lace’s fault, was it!
Defoe? A preposterous seventeenth century opportunist, a loose cannon, an incorrigible hypocrite. And that –let’s face it –was putting it politely.
Candy.
Candy…
Arthur stood up. His face glistening. He grimaced. He re-adjusted his back-pack. He walked on again.
Presumably there was some vague historical connection with the sugar industry, but in truth he was pretty uncertain as to the
finer details. I mean wasn’t
everybody?
He
was
fairly sure, though, that Defoe hadn’t ever been explicit about the origin of this phrase in his copious writings, or its actual…
Phew! Deep breaths. Deep, deep… One-two. One-two. Yes. That was better. That was…
… meaning. And if it had another source –Shakespeare? Chaucer?
Dick
bloody
Francis? –
Arthur was buggered if he knew what it might be. He was a specialist,
dammit.
A
Specialist.
He was the first to admit it, and proudly. Not for him the comprehensive route, the broad-based background in everything from the novels of Jane Austen to the origins of world debt to the nesting habits of the black-headed gull (Arthur Young, a
Generalist?
Never!).
Arthur Young was
partial,
he was a pundit, a boffin, a connoisseur. He was –and there was nothing wrong in it, either –he was… he was
particular.
There
(But hang on a second. Hang on a minute. Because… because wasn’t
this
his area? The seventeenth century? Farming methods. Livestock quotas. The consequences of enclosure. All the rest of that miserable, desiccated, dry-as-a-bone malarkey? Wasn’t
this
his speciality? Wasn’t…? Ah, fuck it. Fuck…)
Something was very wrong here.
One-two. One-two.
Shetland ponies
Hah!
Industrial landmarks
Hah!
Machinery dating back to the industrial revolution
Hah!
Walking. Walking.
Walking.