Behindlings (25 page)
At this point the pen ran out. Jo shook it a few times.
… FOOLS??!
She finished with less of a flourish than she would’ve liked, but once she’d taken the time to re-read her handiwork she seemed moderately pleased with it.
‘There.’
She shoved the piece of paper back over to Patty.
‘Thank you.’
He took it –a smug little grin dimpling the corner of his thin lips –and held it up in front of him, squinting disdainfully at what she’d written (not really reading, only pretending), then peering up and over, every so often, to try and gauge her reaction.
Jo stared back at him, tiredly. She was lost. He had lost her. She couldn’t begin to understand what he was about, what he wanted, what he was after. During his dumb show, her eyes focussed, passively, on that tiny point where her pen’s sharp nib had broken the paper’s thin ply, minutes earlier. The light was now filtering through this hole, like a sparking Pluto, or a pin-prick Jupiter.
1-2-3…
She suddenly crackerjacked out of her reverie.
‘Oh
my…
’
She bounced forward, ‘You horrible
little…
’
‘What?’ Patty darted back, snatching away the paper, his grey eyes sparkling.
‘What?’
(It was one of those flawless ten-year-old boy questions, so complete and facetious, it demanded no answer.)
Jo leaned forward, urgently, ‘You
kept
it, you
bugger.
’
Was she furious? Was she delirious?
Patty clucked his tongue at her, faux-sympathetically, ‘
Aw.
You honestly thought I’d dropped it back there?’
He proceeded to gently flap the scrap of paper back and forth in front of her, as if inciting her to try for a grab at it. A lunge. A snatch.
Jo didn’t move. She was not to be provoked. She eyed the fluttering form, inscrutably, until it slowed down, until it almost stopped.
‘So what
did
you drop?’ she asked, still eyeing it determinedly, her voice sounding brittle as nutty toffee.
Patty sucked in his cheeks, ‘
My
application form, you fucking bloody
mare.
’
‘Did you really.’
Not so much a question, as a dehydrated whip-crack.
‘Huh?’
Jo took a sip of her tea. Cold. Pushed her cup away. Swallowed. Shuddered.
‘What?’ he asked her, and then a second time, ‘
What?
’
Still no answer.
Finally he turned the paper over and focussed in on it himself. His sneer froze.
His eyes rolled.
Then he threw his small head back, hit the thin wall of the cubby with it, expostulated, kicked his knees up, automatically, hit the table with them, expostulated again, tossed himself forward like a small boy-comet, covering the table-top with a hail of flesh and limb and howl and debris. There he rested, breathing heavily.
Why are ten-year-olds, Jo wondered, mildly, (picking up a gherkin and his slightly battered disposable plastic Cola cup) always so unremittingly bloody
dramatic?
When Patty finally rose, he did so rather moistly but with a tremulous dignity.
‘I don’t suppose,’ Jo chanced her arm, ‘you might possibly recollect…
uh…?
’
No.
Patty lifted his left hand to silence her –as though swearing an oath of allegiance to his own stupidity –while their four eyes met in a superbly well-defined architectural arc of mutual consternation across that dirty plastic table-top.
The first of many strangers arrived with the darkness, and it was almost –Arthur thought –well,
poetic,
really, under the circumstances, that the first should be the darkest, and quite positively the strangest. Of Middle-Eastern –maybe Iranian –extraction. Spoke no English. They communicated in French, but what little conversation they did have was inconclusive. Arthur wasn’t fluent enough to establish anything definitive: like why he was there exactly, or who he was, or what he wanted.
(Was this man –oh
Lord,
what a prospect –part of some kind of vaguely shonky, distinctly shady, potentially lunatic
international
conspiracy? Was this whole scenario much bigger –much more complicated –than he’d ever imagined it might be? He’d always believed the whole Wesley thing to be a peculiarly British phenomenon. A Labour of Sisyphus, but strictly parochial. Warped –pointless –faddish.)
Arthur didn’t want –how to put this, exactly –he didn’t want to feel like this strange man had alarmed him
(startled.
Yes. That was more like it. The man had surprised him, had… had
startled
…) but when he subsequently considered the intense and –in all honesty –rather curious interlude that had taken place between them –straight after, and only briefly, because events then rapidly took on their own… their own
momentum –
Arthur decided (he rationalised?) that it was mainly the stranger’s… his… his impertinence that had left him feeling…
Impertinence?
Was that it? Or was it something marginally less aggressive,
something marginally more… Not impertinence. Audacity? Yes. Yes? No.
No, it was his disconnectedness. It was his… his aura of detached
familiarity.
Was that coherent? Did it make any kind of…?
Arthur had been standing in the kitchen (back to the door, just a couple of feet along from the small window which afforded him a view of all-comers from the Benfleet direction), messing around with his mobile phone (was totally embroiled in what he was doing. Hadn’t seen the man approaching. Hadn’t even the slightest
notion
…) when this swarthy, medium height, medium build, medium everything kind of person walked on board (the door had been closed. He’d shown some… well… some
affinity
with the broken door mechanism. Arthur had experimented –several times, in fact –to find a way to open and close it without needing to shove himself against it, bodily. It was warped. It was rather prone to jamming).
This man had entered the boat (casually tipping his head so as to avoid knocking it into the door frame –indicating, Arthur surmised, that he was about 5′8″ or over. Was that… Could that be
construed
as medium?), shut the door calmly and firmly behind him, then just stood there, rubbing his two gloved hands together (because of the cold, Arthur presumed. It was minus three on the thermometer), staring jovially across the galley at him, smiling.
Full teeth, gums, even a tip of tongue.
Flirty.
‘Can I help you?’ Arthur was startled.
The man paused a while before replying, his eyes glancing around the boat, as if hunting out something in particular. They focussed, briefly, on the gas canister (currently burning), then alighted on Arthur’s laptop computer. The computer (on the sideboard) was open and operational. He was working on a document entitled
Agreement of Sale.
Underneath this heading Arthur had written;
I’ve had a change of heart. Let’s proceed…
The mobile phone Arthur held was connected to it by a wire. Arthur was either sending this document somewhere, or possibly receiving something.
The stranger casually inspected the computer’s ‘
batteries running down –save your document and switch to your mains supply
’ notice, which was temporarily flashing, and also took in (his head tipped, like a bird’s) a tiny, unobtrusive beeping; the audio-warning it was also issuing. His eyes finally tightrope-walked the wire, to the small black phone in Arthur’s hand.
‘The batteries…’ Arthur murmured, balancing the phone carefully onto the windowsill, walking over towards the computer and abruptly banging the lid down. The computer squawked, enraged.
‘
Uh…
Can I
help
you?’ he repeated.
The man put all his fingertips to his lips. Both hands. An impulsive movement (like he’d just tasted something exceptional and wished to congratulate the cook on it:
Ah delicious!
In that European way –that gesture the French had. The Italians –or like he was a tiny mouse, gnawing, determinedly, on a juicy wild strawberry).
Seconds later, he moved his hands away. ‘I have no English language,’ he spoke softly, his voice higher than Arthur had expected it to be –almost fluting, almost feminine –but his accent so heavy that his words were pretty much indecipherable.
French, was he?
‘Have you come about Wesley? Is that it?’ Arthur asked, cautiously.
This man speaks no English, Arthur, so why are you still talking in it?
‘Ah…’ the man considered this question for a moment (as if it was entirely frivolous, utterly irrelevant, totally inexplicable).
‘
Wesley?
’ Arthur repeated. ‘Is it about him?’
(To be saying the
name.
To be so
embroiled.
It just felt… it was just… it was madness.)
The stranger widened his eyes, then nodded, ‘
Ah, oui,
’ he smiled, ‘
Oui. Precis, monsieur.
’
He seemed at ease with French, but by no means fluent in it.
He was still looking about him.
‘
Puis-je… uh… Puis-je, peut-être… uh… vous aider?
’ Arthur asked, haltingly.
The man ignored this question and instead pointed genially towards the computer, ‘
Wah! Pas d’electrique, huh?
’
(‘Wah’?!)
‘
Uh…
’ Arthur shook his head, slowly, ‘
Uh… non. Non.
’
But before he’d quite finished speaking, the man was on the hoof again, was walking over to the window (increasing their proximity by a considerable margin. Arthur did not
flinch
as he brushed past him, no, not flinch so much as move, very quickly, very efficiently, into the furthest recesses of the bright green galley).
The man stood squarely in front of the window, staring through it intently, his gloved hand resting on the glass.
He’d moved over there so suddenly –Arthur surmised, from his sanctuary behind the cooker –with such unexpected speed, such determination, such
energy,
that it was almost as if this manoeuvre represented some kind of… some kind of resolution; as if it prefaced some sort of… some sort of notable… no…
fundamental
plan of action. Like he was all fired up and ready for something.
Or was it –Arthur swallowed, nervously –was it just a sound? A movement? Had he been alerted –
frighted –
by something external, maybe?
Arthur struggled to hear this something. But he heard nothing. Just the river outside, gurgling. The heater. The computer. Of all his senses, his hearing was the weakest.
Much to the stranger’s obvious irritation, his cautious instincts had proven entirely founded. ‘
Merde,
’ he muttered. ‘
Quel qu’un arrive.
’
He rapidly withdrew, moving backwards, slipping effortlessly –without even looking –towards the door, grabbing the handle behind him, twisting it, opening it –
damn
him –moving back and beyond it. A cine-reel, rewinding.
On his way through, though, he suddenly remembered… He suddenly recollected… Ah, yes. Arthur.
Him.
He held the door open for a second longer, shrugged apologetically
(Was there really an apology in
it?), grimaced, closed the door quietly and strode off down the walkway (Arthur listened. Couldn’t hear a sound), turned a sharp right (not clambering up the embankment, but opting to walk along the bottom of it –a rather perilous route: the mud was still slippy, the tide
was gushing in), turned a swift left into the river bending, and disappeared.
The sky was getting dark and still darker. Arthur craned his head, watching the final movements of his visitor through the broken glass in the door. He’d been intending to fix it earlier –had tried to, ham-fistedly –but the cardboard he’d tacked up there had already fallen off and onto the floor. He pushed at the door
(bugger.
It stuck. Hadn’t quite acquired the knack yet. Tried it again.
That
was it) and moved cautiously out onto the walkway. It remained foggy in his section of backwater. Couldn’t see far.
Was it
always
foggy here?
Quel qu’un arrive
In the distance… An old…
The
Old Man. Arthur drew a sharp breath, ducked his head, turned abruptly, walked back inside the boat, closed the door, gently, and crouched down behind it. His heart was pounding.
Jesus. The Old… Hadn’t…
But was there any question of him having…?
No.
But was… But…?
No.
Keep your wits, Arthur. Keep your wits. Wesley never speaks to the people following. Not even the Old Man. Not even him.
After a couple of minutes, Arthur slowly arose and peeped out through the broken pane. The other side of it –
Fuck
– stood a dreadful looking hippie and another man with white irises. A blind man. They made a maverick pair.
‘Sorry to disturb you, but we saw the light,’ the hippie spoke first, stepping –rather nervously –onto the walkway, then reconsidering and stepping off again, all the while trying (and failing) to disguise his surprise at Arthur emerging so very eccentrically from his crouching position.
Fat Hippie
Gracious me
Look at the damn state of him
Arthur finally materialised –in all his entirety –from behind the door, and stood straight and tall at his end of the walkway.
Just pretend you were doing DIY or something
He felt his stomach fluttering, but forced himself to grow bold again.
Don’t even think about the old fella
Don’t even…
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ the Hippie repeated, ‘but did you happen to see another man pass this way? Brown hair? In his thirties?’
Right.