Behindlings

by Nicola Barker

  Arthur was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘And what do I get out of it? What do I get out of this so-called, this proposed deal?’

  Wesley grinned again. Heavy teeth. Gappy. Like a pony.

  ‘That’s for you to decide. You take exactly what you want. Take everything, if needs be. It’s entirely your…’ he considered what he wanted to say. ‘It’s your call.’

  Arthur sat quietly, pondering what Wesley had asked of him, still confounded and yet curiously… curiously affected by this offer he’d been made –

  Oh come on

  This is his gift

  This is how he ensnares them

  Be strong

  Be strong

  ‘Want any more, Art?’

  Wesley offered Arthur the cup again. Arthur shook his head. Wesley poured the remaining liquid back into the thermos, sealed it, slowly gathered all his possessions together, stood up, grabbed his rucksack and stashed everything neatly into it.

  Arthur watched him –observed the guitar neck protruding. No. Banjo. Wesley played a banjo.

  ‘You have a phone?’ Wesley asked, once he’d finished.

  ‘Inside the vessel? No.’

  ‘I mean a mobile.’

  ‘No,’ Arthur lied, then… then, ‘Yes. Yes I do, actually.’

  ‘So give me the number and I’ll phone you later. See how things are progressing.’

  Wesley withdrew a pencil from one of the side pockets in his rucksack. It was barely a couple of inches long –smaller, by far, than Arthur’s littlest finger –an old black and red-striped HB. Sharpened by blade, scalloped to a square tip. It reminded Arthur –

  Out of the blue

  – of those lovely old pencils his grandfather had used –

  Smell of soft lead

  Smell of new wood

  – to fill in the crossword. To play noughts and crosses. To write out planting lists at the start of the gardening season.

  That kind of pencil.

  Arthur took it and wrote his number down on the back of an old receipt he’d discovered in his pocket. He found himself shuddering slightly as he handed it over.

  ‘Cold out, isn’t it Art?’

  Arthur nodded. His hands felt cold. He suppressed another shiver. Wesley stuck the pencil and the receipt into his trouser pocket and pulled his rucksack onto his shoulders.

  ‘Fuck me it’s heavy,’ he groaned, and started walking. Five steps on and he spun around, as if he’d suddenly thought of something. ‘You know,’ he spoke quietly, even at this distance, but perfectly audibly, ‘these burdens never get any lighter, do they?’

  Then he smiled and turned and walked on again.

  Jesus. Was that it? Was that everything?

  Arthur stood up himself, almost panicking, discovering his voice already inhabiting his mouth, already speaking.

  ‘Wesley,’ his voice shouted. Then again, ‘WESLEY.’

  Wesley broke his stride for the final time, turned.

  ‘What if I say no?’ Arthur’s voice yelled…

  Calm down Arthur

  Don’t go and blow it

  Don’t go and fuck it up without even…

  ‘What if… what if I want nothing to do with it? Nothing to do with the deal? What happens then?’

  Wesley threw his hands into the air. For a moment Arthur thought he hadn’t heard him and steadied himself to shout again. But then Wesley spoke, ‘Nothing happens. It’s your choice entirely…’ his voice faded, before coming back again, stronger. ‘Like I already said; it’s your call, Arthur.’

  Then he waved his fingerless hand in a half-salute, turned with an air of absolute finality, and continued on his way.

  Fifteen

  Ted always asked for Leo’s permission before he used the computer –asked him repeatedly, every half-hour, with an almost military rigour –even when Pathfinder was out of the agency; attending to a client, at lunch, or just plain wagging (in the winebar or at Bingo or having his regular ‘massage’ with ‘Terry’ for an old ‘hamstring-related fencing injury’). Under these circumstances Ted would simply write him a note, in longhand –neatly signed, neatly dated –saying something like:

  Leo, it is ten-thirty a.m. and I need to use the computer again.

  Thankyou,

  Ted

  And because on some days Ted used the computer continually –almost without interruption (except, of course, to get Leo’s permission) –to the outside observer this established procedure, this formalised ritual between the two of them, might’ve seemed at best, laborious, at worst, quite ridiculous.

  The computer wasn’t even a strange or new or novel innovation. It had been there –on the desk, in the office –from the very beginning, and had always formed a vital component of Ted’s basic job description.

  In actual fact, his Computer Studies O level had been the absolute making of him, employment-wise (what the hell else could he do? Who the hell else would have him?) and had looked wonderfully contemporary on his curriculum vitae, way back at the onset of what he now –and very modestly –called his ‘Agenting Career’.

  (Previous to that there were six ‘lost’ years in the British Navy. The catering corps. His late father’s idea:

  ‘You start off frying the eggs, Ted, you end up running the ship…’

  Not an experience he looked back upon with anything remotely approaching equilibrium: it took upwards of six months to scrub the sheen of grease from his skin –he was like a body-builder, but without the body –without the tan, without the thong. A pale and ineffectual jar of jellied petroleum.)

  Ted was a paid-up participant in the digital age, but (and there was always a but with Ted, or a yet or a despite or a notwithstanding) even this part of his life had hardly been plain sailing.

  In the mid-eighties –the pinnacle, the peak, the prime of his schooldays –they’d had a technological shortfall (a Word Processing paucity) at Furtherwick Park, so he’d started out with a keyboard, drawn in felt-tip, on cardboard, and a veritable slew of hypothetical scenarios:

  (a) Pascal clicked on ‘font’ before saving her document. What happened next? Did she lose that difficult maths problem she’d been working so hard upon?

  (b) William has just written an 80 line, free verse epic poem about ‘Esme’ straight onto his desktop. In your opinion, was that a misguided or a sensible thing for him to have done?

  And due to this ‘Temporary Word Processing Deficiency’, Ted had spent half his time doing secretarial stuff in Elementary Typing with the meanest crew of girls you could possibly imagine; devilish harpies who spent a large proportion of their thrice-weekly lessons ripping the piss unmercifully out of this poor, long-limbed, tight-arsed, blushing, clumsy, ginger-topped pansy who laboured (and not without difficulty) under the cuddly pseudonym of Mister Teddy…

  (Hang on there. Hang on: he was that pansy. But he’d show them –he’d shown them, hadn’t he? –when they all left school with their shorthands and their words-per-minute, unable to get a job because they were computer illiterate. Secretary? A ridiculous sodding anathema in the 1990s.)

  Yes. He’d shown them alright.

  Well, in actual fact he hadn’t really shown anybody. Not computer-wise, anyway. Because Leo had played this little joke on him (when he was still too fresh and too raw in those sweet and silly early days), and while Ted had known that it was a joke, initially, he was soon, nevertheless, persuaded by it, subconsciously.

  It was a simple ruse. It was elementary. Leo had painstakingly altered the Screensaver, in his spare time, late one evening, so that when Ted turned it on the following morning, it’d told him –in no uncertain terms –and in the most offensively jagged script imaginable, that

  LeO iS deeP inSide oF Me. He INhabits My eVerY nerVe, My veRy cOrE, mY evERy fibRe!! Yes! YeS! YES He Is riGht, DEEp INSIde OF mE –witH hiS big HAndS and His kEEn tonGuE aND HIs BOLD anD sTRonG aND INSIStaNT cOCk. Yes! yES! YeS!! hE is rISEn and he is COme! He iS COMe! HE is comE aND coMe and COme aLL ovER m
e!! AHHHHHHHHhhhHHHHHH!

  Do Not PLAy wiTH my KeyS So TEDDy. It is TicklinG. It is HA HA ha fucKINg Ha Ha HA!

  I am LEO’s whORE. So have CleaN hanDs whEN yOU touCH me, okAy? And alwAYS asK NICeLy wheN you –uH! uH! UH! USE ME.

  (Insistant? Someone had forgotten to use spellcheck, apparently.)

  It was childish and it was puerile –it was sheer, pointless bloody folly – so Ted pretended that it didn’t bother him, but it did. It bothered him enormously.

  Because he was a prude, but a gentle prude, with wit and discrimination and sensibility. A kindly prude, with a soft core.

  Leo depended upon this softness as he gradually transformed that computer into a purely hardcore entity. He did it slyly and cynically, with small interventions, little nudges and ticks and touches. He made that machine his own. He colonised it. He monopolised it. He squatted like a mating toad inside its deepest inner recesses –clinging on, clutching, squeezing – until its disarmed and prostrated eighty-digit keyboard quite literally groaned when his plump and clumsy pale male finger deigned to press on it and slowly enter.

  He downloaded porn (predictably) –stuff with hairy women and shaved women (Goddamn he wasn’t fussy), stuff with old women with falsies, lasses with big asses, girls in their nighties taking pisses in bushes, stuff with horses and collies. He downloaded tit-shots and beaver-shots, shit-shots and tot-shots, shots with women in such curious positions that it was hard to tell which end was which and what exactly… uh… was what. This confusion aroused him.

  And the upshot, finally? Ted grew to mistrust the computer. He touched it with trepidation. He kept things to a minimum. He didn’t chat, he didn’t shop, he didn’t surf. He was furtive. He kept all his interaction strictly professional and clean and neat and minimal.

  The computer was such a girl, after all (a lady? Never). The computer was, in actual fact, one of those awful schoolgirl secretaries who’d tormented him so much as a teenager, but she was older now, and wiser: with her sharp tongue and her big breasts, her high heels and her bright lips, her painted nails and her mini. But a virtual secretary. An almost bully.

  And she was temperamental –like all girls could be –and very demanding: questions popping up, with relentless alacrity. Shall I do this? Do you want that? Always needing answers. Always wanting them immediately.

  She could be a cow. Refuse him things if he was clumsy, and for no good reason, either. She was extremely unreliable, entirely unpredictable; she was… she was cheap and mean and nasty.

  Ted treated her cautiously. Couldn’t ever turn her on –turn her on? (Where had all this gender stuff sprung from?) without the powerful suspicion –all too often validated –that Leo might’ve set him up with something suitably revolting –a sound, a picture, a short film, a message –as a joke (but not so funny with clients waiting, peeking over his shoulder every time he pressed a button, hanging out for a phone number, or an address, or an asking price, or a surveyor’s report, or a written contract from a tardy solicitor).

  It had speakers. Leo had wired them in. Speakers which made noises like that implement at the dentist which sucks spittle from the patient’s mouth during a polishing with the hygienist: messy, sexy, dirty noises.

  And he hated them. He hated the noises. He hated the pictures, the porn, the obscenity. He hated that bloody computer. And he hated Leo, especially. But above everything and everybody else, he hated himself. Because he was weak and hunched and soft and silly. Because if it wasn’t for him, he wouldn’t be here: with Bo and Katherine and –God knows who else –after him. With everybody depending and yet not depending. And with Wesley knowing about the sewing and everything. With Wesley…

  Two-thirty p.m. Ted glanced about him, then sat down at the computer (Leo was completing his Spot The Ball coupon: he made twenty choices, daily, and soon he’d be sloping off to deliver them… Yup. Sure enough, he was up and he was out of there…).

  Ted checked his watch. He now had fifteen minutes leeway –if he was lucky.

  He quickly kicked the switch on the plug with his foot, pressed power (the computer fizzed into life, hiccuped quietly, like she’d had too many Snowballs in the pub at lunch, then ran through some setting-up data, with an officious buzzing)… Right… uh… hang on a minute…

  Ted hunted around on his desk for a scrap of paper, found one, scribbled down the time. Two-thirty-one. Wrote;

  Leo, I’m using the computer for a short while…

  Thought for a few moments, hand poised in the air, added, Thanks, signed his name and dated it.

  He turned towards the screen again. The computer blinked back at him, flirtatiously. He firmed his resolve.

  ‘I’m gonna go…’ he muttered to himself, gingerly, ‘I’m gonna go… online…’

  He grabbed the mouse and clicked it, cautiously –Oops

  – the computer refused him –point-blank –on his first attempt –Damn

  Forgot to connect the phone-line

  Ted scrabbled with the wires for a moment, unplugged the phone, plugged up the…

  Okay

  … tried the same manoeuvre a second time.

  The computer churlishly demanded the password. Wouldn’t do a single damn thing without it, Buster. Ted tapped it in, then listened, slightly worriedly, as she processed his request, sent out feelers, made a muffled ringing sound, purred awhile, boinked…

  The screen went blank then lit up again. Okay, okay…

  Ted looked for the right box then silently typed in…uh… now what was the address he was after? Uh… www – uh… yes… www.behindlings.co.uk.

  He’d noticed it on Bo’s print-out, earlier. He’d memorised it, surreptitiously –not that he’d intended… Not that… It was only…

  Survival? Realism? Morbid bloody curiosity?

  Ted sniffed, self-consciously. He wasn’t proud of himself. There was something… not wrong, no, and not unnatural, either… something… well, kind of… invasive? Was that it?

  But this was for Katherine (he told himself). Yes. It was for Katherine and it was… he had to be honest, it was for the pond thing. Pond. That great pond story. Two unconnected matters, somehow –inexplicably –connecting here, with him.

  I mean, to steal a pond and everything… That had to be worth…

  The computer buzzed. He jumped, then shuddered, guiltily…

  That had to be worth … uh…

  Fantastic. He’d made contact with the site already –the graphics began downloading… (This was a Wesley-specific site. The main one –the real caboodle –and impressively professional-looking, too, all things considered… which in itself was, he supposed, slightly… hmmn, well, slightly creepy…) and –yes – things were going fine –hadn’t seen the pond stuff yet, but there was information on Wesley’s general whereabouts over the last seven days and a hotline … uh…

  Click

  A tiny click. That was it. Nothing bigger or louder or stronger or fiercer.

  Just a click. Like an old-fashioned camera taking a picture. Like the sound of a handset placed down onto a receiver –

  Click

  Then the whole thing just went… just went… just… wrong… no… just went…

  Ted reached out his hand.

  Just went… Christ…

  Just went…

  HAYWIRE!!

  Screen filled up with a strange, red lettering, repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating. Computer made a kind of strangled squeak (a yelp?) like it was being suffocated, slowly. Or rapidly. Or kind of… kind of… kind of curdled…

  Ted frowned. He released the mouse and moved a hesitant index finger towards the keypad, pressed the space-bar, nervously. Nothing happened. He got more emphatic. Slammed the keypad. Nothing. Just chaos –continuing –and more red –and more chaos.

  He tried not to panic. Was this a crazy happening of Leo’s devising? But it didn’t seem like Leo’s kind of… didn’t… Ted continued tapping, ever more frantically.

  Now even the mo
use wasn’t working. It’d quit. It’d been swallowed. It’d been mauled… devoured by… by… what was this thing? Was it his fault? Was it outside? Was it contagious? Was…

  Fuck. Everything just jamming and then this spew of information, awful red, then jamming again. Then that terrible last gasp, that choke, that horrible sinking feeling that you sometimes got at the cinema when there was a problem with the projector and the film reel started… started melting… and then… and then… and then…

  Virus.

  Oh shit. Oh shit.

  Ted yanked out the plug at the wall –saw the computer die literally split seconds before he killed its power (he pretended he didn’t see it) like that machine in a hospital which monitors your heart and goes, and goes… blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip… then… zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  Ted grabbed the permission slip he’d written out earlier, crumpled it and binned it. He felt sick. He was frantic. Kept looking about him. Over his shoulder.

  Oh shit. His face was wet with sweat. Armpits soaked. Hands like…

  Oh shit oh shit –

  Now he was really, really…

  Oh Mary Mother of bloody Jesus –

  Now he was really…

  He crossed himself, instinctively. It was a bred-in-the-bone habit –completely automatic –yet to the casual, pagan observer (from the street, from the pavement, through those huge plate glass windows), Ted might’ve looked like he was actually tying a noose for some kind of imaginary hanging –for a lynching –for a Necktie Party. With himself –gentle, kindly, brown-eyed Mr Teddy –as the honourable, the very honourable, Necktie-ee.

  Sixteen

  Suddenly every-damn-body wanted a piece of the boy. He was ultra-magnetic. His allure was irresistible. He was the prize draw –the golden goose –the plum pudding. They all craved a slice of him.