‘I have a right to try and make things better,’ Jo muttered – almost sulkily. ‘Wesley had no business interfering in matters he didn’t understand.’
‘But that’s Wesley,’ Hooch sneered, ‘that’s his knack.’
Jo looked down at her coffee cup for a while, dug her neat thumb-nail into the paper. She looked up again. ‘So Doc already knows the answer to the Loiter, then? And Shoes? And the rest of them?’
Hooch wouldn’t be drawn on this. ‘The Blind Man,’ he said, tipping the dregs of his coffee onto the floor, pushing the toe of his boot into this brown pool he’d created, ‘now there’s a real live wire for you. Almost a local. Ex-copper. Then there’s the journalist boy. Your letter’d certainly provide a juicy little exclusive for a man like him, eh?’
Jo shook her head firmly, ‘My father happens to run the biggest local Salvage Centre on the Charfleets. He offers regular financial support to all local good causes, including the local paper. He funded that nasty, talentless little geek’s entire tennis career. Bo has nothing to gain from making fools of my family.’
Hooch shrugged, ‘But there’s always someone, somewhere, who’ll gain something from making a monkey out of you, Bean. And now Wesley’s involved the stakes are that much higher…’
‘I don’t care about myself,’ Jo said, ‘but I do care about Katherine…’
‘And Katherine still cares for her father,’ Hooch interrupted, ‘or she wouldn’t be happy to continue taking the brunt of all this stuff on his behalf, would she?’
Jo was forced to concede his point. She did it ungracefully, though, with a scowl and a half-shrug. But this was good enough for Hooch. He crumpled up the coffee carton and tossed it towards one of the bins at the far end of the passageway.
‘What you need to understand, Bean,’ he said gently, ‘is that I’m not personally threatened by you in any way. I don’t care about what you’ve done or what you intend to do. I don’t even care about whoever – or whichever interest – you happen to represent…’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘Doc.’
Jo blinked.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s my concerns over Doc – for Doc – that oblige me to warn you off. The way I see it, so long as you’re hanging around here you’re posing a threat to him. To his general wellbeing. To the structure of the group. To the Behindlings. The Behindlings are his life…’
Jo was already shaking her head. But Hooch kept on talking. ‘I don’t feel the need to offer any explanation to you, Bean. I won’t justify what I’m saying or simplify it. I merely want Doc left in peace. He’s in a vulnerable position. People tend to predate on him. They take advantage – sometimes without even realising…’
Jo looked uncomfortable, briefly. Hooch noticed. ‘He lost his boy,’ he continued, ‘he lost some of his anonymity. And he’s a little bit excitable – susceptible, even. He’s confused. People have been saying that he’s all washed-up. That he’s losing it. The truth is that he’s exhausted. He just needs to Follow, to be quiet, to muddle along at his own pace…’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo suddenly wasn’t having any of it, ‘that’s just rubbish. I’ve seen you around Doc, Hooch. I’ve seen the way you constantly undermine him, the way you criticise him behind his back, the way you clearly resent his status among the others…’
‘You’re interfering with things – with situations – that you don’t understand,’ Hooch spoke slowly and calmly, ‘and these are bad situations. Painful situations. Doc and I have a complicated relationship – I’ll make no bones about it – but it’s a relationship which someone from outside of the group couldn’t possibly be expected to understand. And I don’t want you to understand it. What I do want you to register – and it’s very simple – is that you need to get out of here. To go. Today. Immediately. Because if you don’t, you’re going to end up hurting him – unintentionally, maybe, but hurting him nonetheless – the same way you hurt Katherine, Katherine’s family, all the rest of them.’
Jo stared at him, blankly.
‘I’ll leave first,’ Hooch murmured, touching the brim of his hat in a show of unexpected civility, then turning and moving off – rapidly – back down the alleyway, ‘just give it a few minutes before you come on out after me…’ he paused, peeked over his shoulder, winked at her, ‘for the sake of propriety, eh?’
Forty-two
His instincts led him anti-clockwise, and the wind – on this occasion – conveniently caught the back of him, prodded him forward, actively encouraged him. So he took a sharp right and just kept on going –
No reason
No need to justify anything
– until he hit the sea wall and scaled it without thinking.
Still dark. All too soon it was snowing.
He glanced behind him.
He’d been walking for almost forty minutes and this was the first time he’d looked back –
Not a soul
He shuddered, closed his eyes, put his hand to his cheek, rubbed at it gently for a while and then progressed (an almost imperceptible crossover) into slapping at it, ruminatively – the way you’d slap the arse of a newly delivered baby – as if the cheek had grown numb and he was fighting to bring back some feeling into it.
He wobbled. His eyes flew open. He threw out his arms (like a professional unicyclist), regained his balance, then dropped them, briskly, to his sides again.
He peered down to his right, where the sea wall fell deeply – ten feet, fifteen, maybe – onto a concrete pathway (just above what was now marshland – he was headed inland – and a tidal tributary). His eyes suddenly glimmered with a vague sense of recognition.
He continued walking, but now much more purposefully, scanning ahead of him as though hoping for some kind of quick access onto the lower causeway.
He soon found it; a glorified ladder; metal, virtually free-standing; two fireman’s poles with skinny rungs slung between them – bolted into the wall, the bolts all rusting.
He swung himself down, nimbly (the flesh of his palms almost sticking to the metal, it was so icy) reached the bottom, kept on walking – still in the same direction – but slower now, and as he walked he closely scrutinised the dark wall above him. Three minutes – possibly four – passed in this way. Then he stopped, squinted, stepped back, read something:
Katherine Turpin (in a luminous spray – ‘whore’ scribbled over the top of her name in a different colour) aborted her own father’s bastard
He stepped forward and touched his hand to it, smiled, then kept his hand on the wall – its rough concrete – as he continued walking, trailing it behind him like a child running a stick against metal railings.
He stopped for a second time when he felt the quality of the concrete changing. He drew close to the wall and found himself analysing another, shorter line of graffiti (much smaller, this time), hacked into the concrete with a knife or a flint or a broken bottle. He stuck out his lower lip – such was the light and the level of concentration required – and struggled to read it (painstakingly tracing his fingers through each letter for further confirmation)
I
am
the
fucking…
He tried to find a noun at the end of the sentence (he imagined; I am the fucking king; I am the fucking end; I am the fucking champion; I am the fucking best fuck in the whole fucking WORLD so FUCK YOU) but there was nothing.
He frowned.
‘I am the fucking…’ he murmured. Leaving space for expansion – an opening, a question mark, even…
Then, ‘I am the…’
He began chuckling (the path between his nose and his lips so frozen he thought it might be in imminent danger of splitting).
‘I am the fucking,’ he proclaimed proudly, finally making sense of it, turning back into the wind, throwing his chin into the air (his eyes instantly pummelled by snowflakes, his lashes gently clogged and weighed down by them).
I AM THE FUCKI
NG
Without thinking he shoved his fingertips into his mouth, sucked on them and realised that they were bleeding.
He began walking again. He kept walking –
I am the fucking
– past the putting green –
I am the…
– left onto the roadway –
I am…
– just beyond the bridge… the –
Calvin
– No–
Culvin
– No–
Colvin
Hah!
He punched the air, victoriously, then clutched at his stomach –
Sharp pain
The snow was falling faster. He paused for a moment and saw – as if the whole tragic spectacle had been specifically timed for him, or caused by him (his spectral presence standing there on the edge of that tarmac) – a slow-moving jeep hitting a fast-moving fox.
The jeep honked, braked, made a sudden, thudding contact, but did not stop. Wesley walked forward. The fox lay on its side in the heart of the road; panting, eyes blueing up with shock; a vixen.
One of her back legs was hanging loose, broken, and there was an inconceivably huge gash on her stomach. He saw that her teats were red and still swollen from feeding. He put his hand into his pocket for his knife –
Nothing
– he cursed, walked to the side of the road, saw a dilapidated road sign –
Leisure Centre
– appraised it, kicked it over, grabbed the loosest supporting metal pole, yanked it free (it took some while to give entirely – the base was weighed down with concrete) carried it over to the fox –
God bless you
Hit
And hit
– killed her.
Another car drove over the bridge, caught him in its headlights, braked, then sounded its horn. He tossed the pole aside, shuddering, picked her up and slung her warm carcass across his shoulders – her blood sweet on his neck, his back, his fingers – and headed for the long grass on the opposite siding. He crouched low there, laying down the body gently, waiting for a while and then emitting a sharp and ghostly bark into the icy early morning.
It must’ve been half an hour before the first cub appeared. It was shy of the stranger; hesitant. Wesley made a crying sound; a kind of whining. He had inadvertently smeared some of the vixen’s blood onto his cheeks. He had cut off her tail with a piece of broken glass and tied it to his wrist with a bundle of tightly-wound grass.
The small fox drew closer.
‘Your mother’s dead, little man,’ Wesley whispered, ‘come on over here and have a smell of her.’
The cub was thin. His coat was coarse and uneven. His ribs protruded like the individual struts on an old-fashioned, oil-fired hospital radiator. He came close and sniffed tentatively at the corpse of his mother. He licked some of the blood from her. He emitted a tiny squeak. He pushed his nose to her teat – selfishly, almost angrily – and tried to suckle there.
Wesley made a series of gentle cooing sounds until the cub had finished and pulled away, then he picked up the vixen again, lifted her over his shoulders, turned – but very slowly – holding the vixen’s four feet together in his one good hand and trailing her tail onto the ground behind him, still affixed to the other.
He walked on; over the makeshift wooden bridge (slippy with ice – treacherous) and onto the mud embankment which snaked alongside the river. He did not look back to check if the cub was following. He looked forward, and from side to side, struggling – in the darkness – to locate the vixen’s spore.
He paid special attention to any large rocks or tree-stumps (although there were precious few in these snow-peppered, mud-splattered flatlands) where he imagined the vixen might’ve left territorial markings. He found several. But the first was goose – he bent down, sifted through the snow and pressed the frozen faeces loosely between his fingers, sniffed. Clucked. The second was badger. The third –
Ah
He glanced back. Two cubs now, both following anxiously, ten, maybe twenty paces behind him. Ahead lay the dawn – he drew a deep breath – but only the faintest suggestion of it, and the concrete flyover; arching its long back and yawning resignedly into the possibility of morning.
Beyond that?
What a question
Beyond that?
The future:
Pissed-up
Blood-smattered
Blister-raw
The flyover – when he reached it – was still all but deserted and pitch dark underneath. But he remembered from walking here before (and could tell by the smell; deadened by the snow, but still perceptibly there) that the den was very near. He waited for his eyes to adjust, looked around for the give away pile of dirt. Found it.
A truck rumbled over.
He staggered out the other side, straightened up (his back protesting – his fingers numb now, his nose, his lips), peered behind him –the cubs were close together, shoulder rubbing shoulder, entering the den, joggling for first access, for precedence. He shifted the weight of the mother, put one foot onto the stile and stared ahead.
White had made everything brighter. And he’d turned a corner. The snow was now hitting the left side of him. He half-squinted into it. He frowned. He stepped onto the stile for added height. He stared. He swore. He glanced up onto the roadway –
Quiet
– he felt around inside his pockets, located the agent’s mobile, turned it on, pressed the first digit, experimentally.
Ted’s aunt answered –
Hello?
He cut her off.
The second –
Work
Ted’s voice.
‘I need you,’ Wesley said, ‘bring me some rope. Heavy rope. At least twenty foot of it…’ he paused, ‘and a box of eggs, and the librarian. Meet me by the flyover.’
He completed his instructions and dialled another number. He tapped his foot, impatiently. The set of his expression indicated some kind of call-answering service. He did not seem surprised by this. He waited for the beep, then spoke.
‘I’ve got your message, Gumble Inc,’ he said, bending forward slightly as he spoke, clutching his stomach, his lips white with fury, ‘that was my father’s boat. I know exactly what you’re doing. We had a deal. Doesn’t matter how things turned out. Fuck the bloody context… ’
He paused and gazed at the boat awhile, and then something strange suddenly struck him. ‘Arthur’s not playing,’ he said, his voice quite astonished, ‘is he?’
He chuckled, shook his head, then focussed again. ‘Back off, or I’ll do as I threatened. I don’t care about the Old Man. I’ll sacrifice the Old Man…’ he paused, squinted towards the boat, saw it move –saw it shuddering –as a choppy incoming wave hit a supporting strut.
He swore under his breath, cut the line and tossed Ted’s phone into the river, adjusted the vixen and jumped over the stile, butting his head like an angry ram into the flurry of snow as it fell on him.
Forty-three
She had thought it might be the postman, or Wesley, even –
Had Ted actually given him a key?
– but it wasn’t either of them. It was Bo.
He was standing on her doorstep, cheerfully exuding his own special kind of vitality (the kind male models cultivate on the back of wholegrain cereal packets) and he was smiling widely at her – gloating, more precisely – larger than life, smugger than hell, thicker than shit – and that was the worst part of it –
The ignorance
So she smiled right back at him, wished him a hearty good morning, kicked him hard in the gonads (was pleased by the accuracy of her attack, considering she was wearing her slippers and they were liable to fly off without warning) watched calmly as he bent over, clutching himself, squeaking (you’d think a man of his stature might produce a better sound than that), then (never one to let an opportunity pass) she lifted her knee, brought down her hands (meshed forcibly together), united these two disparate bo
dy-parts in a sterling manoeuvre, heard a gnuff, then his nose crack (or at least she hoped she had – hoped it wasn’t a tile on her front step), shoved him off her porch, told him to watch out for her fucking hydrangea (he didn’t) clucked her tongue furiously, glanced up, saw Dewi walking out onto his verandah, snorted, showed him the finger, went back inside and slammed her door shut behind her.
Have I gone too far?
Two minutes passed.
Silence
Then the shouting commenced.
Bo’s voice – in the road – but directed away from her; towards another…
She did it HERSELF!
– he yelled –
You fucking love-lorn IDIOT
She wrote it HERSELF
And she MAINTAINED it
All these fucking YEARS
She MAINTAINED IT HERSELF
D’you HEAR me?
She maintained it HERSELF
I HAD NO BLOODY PART IN IT
Katherine burst out laughing – a loud laugh, violent, almost hysterical – then turned, smacked her head into the wall – her clenched fists flying out behind her – and commenced crying so fiercely that her snot ran in a waterfall down onto the floor.
The rope had been the easy bit – he was on good terms with the local chandler (sold him his premises, August 1997), and the eggs were a cinch, but the librarian – the fragrant Eileen – proved a trickier proposition altogether.
He was lucky to catch her. She was half way up her street, picking an unsteady route along the icy pavement in some exceedingly inappropriate footwear – little lime green boots with spiky heels (at the sight of their inappropriateness, his mouth twisted up at its corners). Not dressed for the cold particularly (a lemon-yellow raincoat, a pale yellow cashmere frock, a silk scarf with seashells on it). Ted pulled up and hailed her from his old, white company Fiesta.
‘I’m a little late for work, Ted,’ she lied, turning her face away and flapping her hand at him like he was a persistent middle-eastern child beggar who’d – quite meanly yet miraculously – detected some unfathomable sign of weakness in her.
Behindlings Page 43