Behindlings (35 page)

Ted spun around, ‘He did?’

‘If you’re lucky.’

‘It’s an
Apple Mac.
Does he know about
Apple Macs?
’

‘Arthur Young,’ Wesley declared, ‘is the fucking
Godhead
of
Apple Macs.
’

Katherine began coughing. Ted inspected his watch. His delight promptly dissipated. ‘It’s already eight-thirty,’ he said.

‘What of it?’

Wesley slammed the fridge shut (Katherine finished spluttering, wiped her nose on her arm and stretched out her legs again with a groan of relief). He took the carrot and the celery over to the table where he chopped them up, tossed them into the pot, secured the lid and slammed the whole thing into the oven.

‘Now I need paper,’ he told Ted. He had something to prove to her.

Ted was still standing by the sink, picking tufts of fluff from his jacket and trousers. He was looking dishevelled. His tie was
askew. His jacket was off. There were spots of blood on his cuffs. He was hot.

Wesley was hot too. Even the chinchilla was panting. He strolled over and checked its water, saw it was low, took out the bottle, filled it and replaced it.

In that same corner of the kitchen (in the background Katherine was humming a paradoxically sombre version of Kabalevsky’s
The Clown)
Wesley came across a stray handout from Holland and Barrett (shoved between a First Edition of Antonio Gramsci’s
Prison Notebooks
and Iris Murdoch’s
Nuns and Soldiers)
about the benefits of Spirulina (he’d found a jar of it languishing unopened in the empty freezer –had added four capsules to dinner). He turned it over and grabbed a pen from the table-top.

‘If you refuse to come into the living room and see for yourself
you lazy, pissed-up freak,
’ (the last part he murmured provocatively under his breath and Ted indicated his unease with a tiny flinch), ‘then I’ll prove it to you here.’

‘What?’

She’d already forgotten their earlier disagreement.

(Now she liked him. Yes she did. The way he’d taken her judgement of him and had swallowed it. She liked that. He’d never know how much –of course –until she got him into bed.)

Wesley began writing, ‘I want your opinion on this, Ted.’

Ted looked up from his watch for the second time. ‘It’s eight-forty,’ he said, ‘weren’t we…?’

‘The way I see it,’ Wesley spoke as he wrote (in longhand) the same word several times over, ‘the only real threat to the future of our culture –insofar as the concept of “our culture” means a damn thing any more –is the universal inclination towards what Alvin Toffler calls
The Alien Time Sense.
’ He glanced up. ‘People no longer have any concept of real time, Ted. You must see this every day in your own particular line of work; the breaking of appointments, the financial overstretching, the desire to represent the self through the conduit of property –wall colour –decoration –the
hunger…
Toffler says the rot set in with the burger.’

Ted struggled to grasp what Wesley was telling him. The struggle ended with his use of the word
alien.

‘Everything takes,’ Wesley continued (writing again), ‘just as long
as it takes. Never lose the sense of how long something should be in
actual
time, Ted. A death. A dream. A meal. A transaction. To wait well is to truly express your lack of alienation from what is
actual.
When I make people take pause it’s really a kind of reaching out. It’s like a giant bear-hug from an alternate time-frame.’ He shrugged, ‘I think about this kind of stuff a lot when I’m out walking.’

Katherine expectorated, noisily, from the corner.

‘Alien Time…’ Ted parroted, endearingly.

‘
We
are the aliens, Ted. The alien is progress. We scapegoat the stranger, but the stranger is the alien within us. The alien is what we aspire to. He abducts. He steals the earth and brings modernity. He comes from another planet. He laughs at the mundanity of nature. His world is
nowhere
to him. He seeks only to invade and to pilfer…’

‘
You
are the alien, then, you pretentious fucker,’ Katherine interjected, gurgling on cocoa.

Wesley ignored her. He continued talking, without drawing breath, ‘The alien, Ted, has no constraints. He is both what we crave and what we fear. We have wrung the neck of time, Ted. And in the process we have asphyxiated
our own reality.
Urban man lives only in dreaming.’

Wesley completed his task the same moment he finished speaking. He carried the results of his labours to Ted, flashed them at him, then squatted down next to Katherine.

‘Take a squint.’

He passed the paper to her. Katherine took it, frowned and peered. She read it, laboriously, ‘
C-u-n-t,
’ she said.

‘No. Try the one below. Take your time. Experience the complexity.’

‘
C-u-n-t,
’ she repeated, jiggling her knees –

Pale knees

Two field mushrooms on a damp Autumn pasture

Wesley inspected the paper again himself, ‘No. Make some bloody effort.’

She opened her mouth for the third time.

‘
Aunt,
’ Wesley interrupted, snatching the paper back again, ‘a-u-n-t. That’s what I wrote. But I did it longhand. I never join my downstrokes to my… It’s my style. It means…’

‘Unreliable,’ Katherine said, ‘you’re an unreliable little turd. Sometimes vicious. You kill birds. You hide inside horses. You reject good chocolate. You abuse the gentle.’

‘The point I’m making,’ Wesley talked over her, ‘is that I have an
aunt
in the area. And I was thinking about her a little earlier when I was playing with your sand. I wrote aunt. Therein lies the confusion. I did not call you a cunt. You called yourself that.’

‘Where?’ Ted glanced up from his fluff-infested trousers.

‘South Benfleet. My father’s younger sister, Penelope. Married to an ex-vicar. We don’t speak.’

‘So you’re telling me,’ Katherine was suddenly slurring her words, ‘that your aunt is a
cunt?
’

(She pronounced it
caaant
for added humour.)

‘You’re so
funny,
’ Wesley chuckled, ‘it’s no wonder every twelve-year-old boy in this town beats a path to your door.’

Ted’s eyes widened. His thoughts turned to Bo.

Katherine scowled.

‘This woman I once dated…’ Wesley turned back to Ted, ‘the female with the antique pond…’

Ted’s head jerked up –

Pond

‘she was a Careers Consultant with a major Bank. They analysed your writing –just as a matter of course –before they’d make you a job offer. I write with my left hand now the right one’s gone. It makes me a whole lot scruffier.

‘But what do they read into that? The truth is that these people will fuck you up just for being
who you are,
they will
reject
you for being yourself –the product of their environment –the product of
capitalism –
and that is fucking
sinful.
’

‘I need a fag,’ Katherine said, reaching up and grappling around blindly on the counter above her.

‘This guy I knew on the markets,’ Wesley continued, reaching for the cigarette packet and knocking one out for her –finding a lighter hidden inside the packet too, removing it –‘got pissed up then fell asleep in the shed where we all stored our stalls at night. Had a fag in his hand. Burned everything to shit. Himself included.’

‘Did he die?’

(A flutter of interest in Katherine’s grey-blue eyes.)

‘Nope,’ Wesley sounded regretful, ‘just burned his palm very badly. So drunk it didn’t even wake him at the time. My work associate –Trevor –pulled him from the flames. Said he burned off all his pubic hair. He was having a… you know: markets –stalls –sheds…’

‘No I don’t know,’ Katherine interjected.

‘What did you sell?’ Ted asked.

Katherine was battling with her lighter.

‘Fruit.’

Wesley grabbed the lighter and lit the cigarette for her.

‘What kind of fruit?’ Ted asked.

‘
Fruit.
’

He looked around him. ‘There’s no ashtrays,’ he said.

‘It’s actually ten to nine,’ Ted interjected.

Wesley ignored him and sat down on the floor next to Katherine, stretching out his legs and placing the piece of paper between his knees. He then deftly folded it, tore it into two perfect squares, took one of these squares and began folding again in earnest.

‘What’re you doing?’ Katherine exhaled smoke at him.

‘You stink of violets,’ Wesley said.

‘Pardon?’

‘You smell of violets.’

‘Pardon?’

‘According to Freud, violets have strong psychological implications.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Violence.’

‘Huh?’

‘Violets…
Violence.
You have an aggressive scent.’

‘
Grrrrrrrrrr.
’ Katherine snarled at him.

Wesley smiled. ‘
Katherine Turpin suddenly found herself possessed…
’ he told her softly, folding all the more deftly, pulling corners, inverting points, twisting, doubling back, ‘
by the uncontrollable spirit,
’ he finished with a flourish and held what he’d made out to her, ‘
of a bear.
’

Katherine peered at it.

‘Just like Jim Morrison,’ she said.

‘I believe it was a Native American in that instance.’

‘You are so clever,’ she said, and took the object from him, ‘although it’s a shitty little
squirrel,
in actual fact.’

‘Squirrels can be very aggressive,’ Wesley demurred, ‘and they have a profound spiritual aspect.’

‘Can I have a look?’ Ted asked.

Wesley snatched the squirrel from Katherine and passed it over. Ted smiled at it.

‘How’d you learn to do that?’ Katherine asked.

‘Therapy for my hand. I had a specialist who recommended origami to improve coordination. This was during the short phase when I convinced myself that I
wanted
to be better. Now I understand that the concept of “better” is just an evil myth put about by fascist medical practitioners.’

While he was speaking, Wesley was folding. This time the object was easier to assemble.

‘Guess,’ he said, holding it up to Ted.

Ted frowned.

‘Your parents named you after this man.’

‘Ted fucking
Heath,
’ Katherine spluttered. ‘Correct.’

He handed the plain
origami
head to her.

‘I must learn how to do that,’ she mused, ‘do you play mah’jong by any chance?’

‘I have a book in my rucksack by Robert Harbin,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘He’s the best we British have: a serious folder, but with a great sense of humour. The Japs and the Yanks are rather more po-faced about it.’

Wesley unfolded Ted Heath and refolded. Katherine watched on, fascinated.

‘Ashtray,’ he said, pushing it across the tiles at her and springing to his feet, ‘dinner will be in about an hour. Take that wing off. It’s cutting into your neck. We’re going to the pub.’

‘Bar.’ Ted picked up his jacket.

‘Spot on, Ted,’ Wes smiled, grabbing a chunk of Katherine’s chocolate, ‘you’re so reliably…’ he placed it on his tongue and sucked for a moment, ‘
chilli,
’ he said.

Ted frowned, struggling to assimilate this compliment as he followed him out.

Twenty-five

Oh yes he was
in
alright, but he’d left the lights off as a precaution; a safeguard –

All the better to…

Shut-up

Preferred the calm of the dark after the strain of work. There was nothing… nothing
untoward
in it. Nothing at all. It was simply a quirk. A preference.

Came home – in fact – slightly later than usual –
No hard and fast rules in this line of business

– once the sun had set and the coy suggestion of rain (its soothing, fog-tinged sussurations) looked like turning into something more chilling –

No point…

Outdoor job, close to the Dutch Village; pulling down a turn-of-the-century summerhouse –

Criminal

– beautiful old thing –
Hooligan

Doing what he could to salvage the best of the fine painted timber –

That gorgeous, old-fashioned lead-based grey-green colour Peeling off in voluptuous curls under the heavy pressure of a clumsy finger

– piled it into the back of his Mazda. Threw a heavy plastic sheet over, for the journey –

Cat sat under a Euphorbia bush

Just watching

Gold eye

Jumped out of its bones when the roof caved in

Belted towards the conservatory

After all that commotion (and during, even, basking beneath it)…

That high-pitched stillness of ocean-floor

Canvey

Quiet

Birds a-bed by three

No point in…

Shoved the wood into storage on the Charfleets at the workshop. Might make a –

Time allowing…

– Might make a fine, glass-fronted bookcase, like his Great Aunt Mathilda in Poole’d had, when he was a boy – full of fascinating books about mineralogy.

Arrived home at six, work and worry-weary. Anxiety still grinding away inside of him – not stationary, but moving –
Back and forth, back and forth

– like a sharp-toothed saw, hacking and hewing.

Parked the car in the lock-up out the rear. Crept into the house the back way –

Nothing to apologise for

– took a quick shower. Was standing at that window twenty minutes later; scent of Brylcreem and Imperial Leather…
Hmmn

Slow, to begin with.

Then the two old boys came; the one whose son had… but who still persisted (he was the first – sat down under the streetlight and messed about with his bootlaces). Next up, the ignorant one in the hat and the glasses clambering out of a white van –