Behindlings (41 page)

‘It was something more…’

He fell silent. Arthur didn’t seem to be listening, anyway.

‘Was it to do with New Year, by any chance? The stuff in Brighton?’

Ted shook his head.

Arthur snapped the phone shut with a growl and slipped it into his pocket. He turned back to the computer again. He seemed deeply preoccupied, if not necessarily by it –
Profound absence of tap

He turned back around again. ‘I have some equipment in my bag,’ he said, ‘and I need to charge it. Is it okay to use the plug here?’ He pointed.

‘What kind of stuff?’ Ted felt uneasy. He was in enough bloody trouble with Leo already. Didn’t feel the need to
add
to it particularly.

‘Portable computer. Nothing risky. I’d charge it at home but I’m staying on a boat. I have no mains power there.’

‘I suppose it’d be churlish to refuse…’ Ted murmured –wishing he could be churlish for once in his damn life. But this man was fixing his… Doing him a… And Wesley seemed to… to
trust…
He’d invited him back for dinner, after all. Katherine’s. In an hour (had seemed pretty confident that he’d be finished with the police by then).

Ted glanced at his watch. The hour was almost done.

‘It’s nearly time to meet Wesley at the bungalow. I could walk you over, then dash back here and sit it out for the glazier. I’m certain Katherine would let you re-charge there if you asked her.’

Arthur shrugged.

Tap tap tap

‘I still can’t…’ he promptly changed the subject, ‘I still can’t get over that girl in the bar. The skinny girl with the short…’

‘Yes,’ Ted said. ‘It was…’ He couldn’t think of a word. ‘Odd,’ he said, finally.

‘Is she local? She seemed to know her way around the place. She was having a drink with the police officer.’

‘Right.’

Ted seemed indifferent.

‘She drew blood,’ Arthur continued, ‘I don’t know how bad the wounds were. Wesley always seems to inspire that kind of…’

Crazy

‘that kind of…’

Lunatic…

‘that kind of mind-boggling loyalty.’

‘I do know her…’ Ted interrupted –as if only just patching it all together, ‘she’s a Bean. She’s the Bean girl.’

Arthur didn’t seem to be listening. He just shrugged, ‘I figured she must be…’

Tap tap tap

‘
… connected
in some way. Because of the Welsh lad. Because of the extremity of his reaction.’

‘Yes it was…’ Ted nodded, ‘… it was extreme, certainly.’

Arthur peered up, ‘A Behindling, then, d’you reckon?’

‘I…
uh…
’ Ted scratched his head, ‘I’m afraid I don’t really know what that
means.
’

Arthur opened his mouth as if to tell him, but Ted interrupted, ‘And I think I’m happier
not
knowing,’ he gently resisted, ‘I mean if you don’t know the rules you can’t be… it’s less…’

Arthur shrugged. He seemed to be evaluating something –

This level of naivety

Suspicious

And he was very well placed…

‘We went to school together,’ Ted continued, misconstruing Arthur’s silence as hostility, wanting to mollify him, ‘and she has brothers in Canvey. Three brothers. One runs a minicab business. One manages the sports centre. The other owns a salvage company on the Charfleet Estate, along with her father.’

‘I see.’

‘But she had very long hair before.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. That’s why I didn’t… She had very long hair. Blonde. Wesley actually spoke to her, earlier this afternoon. She said she was over from Southend for the day. But I’m certain it was her, and that she was from Canvey, originally.’

Ted noticed –with some irritation –how Arthur sprang to attention at the mention of Wesley’s name. As if everything gained its significance through its connection to him.

‘Well placed, too, then, eh?’ Arthur murmured.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said she’s
well placed.
Like you are.’

Arthur gave Ted a significant look. But Ted seemed mystified by it, if not a little disturbed. Perhaps the strange light wasn’t helping.

Ted shifted his weight.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Arthur turned back to the computer, smiling –

That kind of innocence

You couldn’t fuck with it

He dwelled briefly on the broken bottle and the blood. There was something… there was something not quite… that
level
of…

Outrageous

Bean.
Bean.
Needed to remember…

Then he gradually began tapping again; curtailing, re-configuring, tidying things up.

Ted padded slowly to the front door (couldn’t risk the picture window –too open –too bare). He peeked through it and over towards the Leisure Centre where the last few stragglers for the night’s second Bingo session were doggedly accumulating. Still raining. That deep, that steady, that
ineffable
Winter-deep Canvey
drear.

Then he blinked. He drew a sharp breath. He pulled back. He double-checked. He pulled back even further.

‘
Duck,
’ he whispered urgently.

Arthur ducked, immediately –under the table –bones creaking.

Ted’s mouth had fallen open, his eyes were improbably wide.

Could’ve
sworn
he just saw… Could’ve
sworn
he just…

Eileen.

But she wasn’t… she seemed… she wasn’t looking over. She
was staring down, fixedly. Scuttling along. Scarf pulled around her head, over her cheek, as if… yanked across… like in… a kind of… a mad… a desperate…

Purdah

She always played Bingo with her mother on a Friday, but tonight she was walking in the opposite direction. Head down. Straight past. Scurrying…
uh…

Home –would that be?

‘Can I…?’ Arthur’s face was ruddy with the exertion of his position.

Ted’s head jerked around.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Boss’s wife. She usually plays Bingo on a Friday.’

Didn’t need to mention…

How distressed…

Shouldn’t…

Or Wesley…

Arthur straightened up again, grimacing.

‘Quick response, though,’ Ted added –

Must be military

Or very…

Arthur shrugged. He whizzed the mouse around, clicked it a few times, waited, then flipped off the power.

‘That’s about it,’ he said, stretching and yawning.

As the screen went black, so too did his corner.

‘We’re back to all the basics,’ he continued, matter-of-factly, through the darkness (Ted was still visible by the door), ‘I’ve not been able to save everything, but you’ve been pretty fortunate, all in all.’

Ted chuckled to himself, weakly, touching his head, his hair, not a little derangedly. ‘Must be my lucky day,’ he said.

Outside, meanwhile, a small van was pulling up, flanked –on both sides –by the distinctive metal struts denoting the largescale transportation of breakable material.

Arthur’s ironic eyes trailed the van, its driver (improbably well-attired –for Service –in a smart shirt and tie and blazer).

‘I think it
must
be,’ he replied.

Thirty

‘You’ve checked the points, presumably…’

A voice spoke – a male voice – from directly behind her, ‘they’re always the first thing to go with a Mini. In damp weather, especially.’

Josephine carefully withdrew her head from under the small bonnet of her car. ‘Several times already,’ she said, turning and instinctively bringing the screwdriver she was holding (her hands so cold she could barely cling onto it) to the front of her belly.

But it was Wesley.

She stared up at him, astonished.

He peered past her, into the engine, his face (even in the steady murk of semi-darkness) enlivened by a clutch of painful-looking reddish blotches. ‘I’m mechanically-minded,’ he said, squinting myopically, ‘but I eschew the car ideologically.’

She shifted left, to allow him full access, while surreptitiously stealing her injured arm behind her back (something she instantly regretted – it created a furtive impression, as if she was now intent upon hiding the screwdriver from him, for some inexplicable reason).

Wesley didn’t miss a thing. He leaned sideways to try and spot what she was concealing. She shifted her feet (heavy as a shire horse’s hooves after a full day’s ploughing) and sheepishly brought the tool back around again, her cheeks reddening. She seemed painfully aware of his sudden proximity.

He pulled out the points and blew on them, drying them on the lining of his jacket.

‘I t-t-tried the points,’ she repeated, shivering (so cold her lips
were almost frozen; her words might shatter if he breathed any warmth on them).

Wesley pushed the points firmly back into place again. ‘Antifreeze?’

She nodded, ‘Last thing yesterday. F-first thing this morning.’

‘Checked the oil?’

She nodded.

‘Petrol? Water? Battery?’

She nodded again.

He stepped back, wiping the grease from his fingers onto his trousers.

That injured hand

A baby bird

Opening and closing like a hungry fledgling

‘Then you should probably get a cab back to Southend. You’ll kill yourself if you stay out here much longer.’

‘I’d get a c-cab if I was anywhere else,’ she said, her teeth clashing pitiably, ‘but I can’t here. N-not in C-Canvey.’

Canvey

Pronounced the name like it was something heinous – polluted – despicable.

Wesley mused this over – staring at her intently – clearly impressed by her particular brand of evasive straightforwardness. Then he smiled. He shrugged. He turned away –

So let her die

‘It was m-me who sent you that letter,’ she chattered after him, wrapping her arms around her shoulders to try and cushion her juddering chin, ‘about my… about…’

‘I have no address,’ Wesley cut her off, contemptuously, ‘I receive no…’

‘When you were staying down in Devon. With the p-p-potter. The cr-crazy potter. Last year. Early. After the book first came out. It was about Katherine, about the gr-graffiti…’

Wesley walked on a few paces.

He never talked to the Followers. There were perfectly good reasons for it. He had to keep things separate. It was a kind of self-preservation.

‘But I wasn’t F-Following then,’ she said (as if reading his
thoughts). ‘And it isn’t…’ She dropped the screwdriver and bent down to pick it up again, ‘it isn’t
f-fair…
’

‘What isn’t?’ Wesley paused for a second, half-smiling, but keeping his back turned deliberately towards her, ‘What isn’t
f-fair?
’ He bleated out the word in a cruel impersonation.

(The concept of fairness seemed so laughable to him, so thin, so weedy, so conceptually pointless.
Fair?
What kind of rankly amateur, blithering shallow-wit was this woman, anyway?)

Josephine felt her nose running. Was unable to stop it. Tasted the salt of snot on her upper lip. ‘It’s impossible to approach you without… without F-Following. I st-started unintentionally. I was… I got… It’s not what I…’

‘I didn’t
get
any letter,’ he repeated, ominously, ‘and the potter, for your information, isn’t remotely crazy.’

He was facing into the wind. He’d been released from custody less than ten minutes earlier. He’d had no intention of happening across her. Of getting… getting…

Button-holed

He hated that kind of… of…

Responsibility

It was well past eleven (although time meant nothing to him; time was merely the interval between sleeping and waking, eating and shitting). He briefly half-remembered his promises for dinner. He half-remembered Katherine – the stink of drink – the milky neck – the lazy temptation.

They were standing on a quiet, flat, unremarkable street only five minutes walk from the town centre and the Furtherwick (the Police Station two roads off to their left).

It was foggy, threatening to snow. He felt his own face slowly freezing. His cheek – his chin – his bruises were aching.

‘I only n-need…’ she said – trying to walk forward a step but her legs kept on seizing, ‘just to
explain,
b-before…’

‘You’ll freeze to death out here,’ he warned her, not sounding particularly concerned by this prospect (more bored by it), but even so…

He weakened for a moment and peered over his shoulder. She was a pathetic sight. Slight as a feather. Shaking like a puppy in a sudden bout of thunder. She was licked and whipped. She was stopped. She was
fucked.

‘You were wet,’ he said, suddenly remembering (in a blurry haze, a fug), ‘earlier, in the bar…’ He squinted at her, ‘and you’re
still
wet. You’ll catch hypothermia. Stop being a fool. You can’t possibly stay out here.’

‘I ha-have to stay,’ she said, ‘I
?-need
to… I’m in a…’

He growled under his breath and strode impatiently towards her. ‘Show me the arm.’

Her arm was hidden again. She didn’t want to show it. She was humiliated now, by everything. And if he was kind – admittedly, it seemed a remote possibility – but if he was, she would surely start crying. And he would really hate her, then. And deservedly.

He reached out his bad hand – the sheer, shiny pincer of palm and thumb – grabbed a hold of her elbow, yanked it forward and roughly shoved back the sleeve of her jumper. She winced.

‘I thought you were working for the company,’ he said, staring at the cuts as if he couldn’t quite believe in them – four in all, each two inches long, bottle shaped – curving into smiles – a couple thick with dried blood and new scab, the third and fourth still oozing, ‘and even if you aren’t,’ he released her arm dispassionately, ‘you’re only complicating matters unnecessarily.’