Behindlings (43 page)

Like tiny, dried-out bat’s claws

Long-toed

Tender

‘seem to have fared worse than the rest of you. Ears aside…’

Pink as a piglet’s with the sun shining behind them

‘and your neat hands, obviously.’

Neat hands

The windows were already steamed to capacity. Wesley had
discovered an old blanket in the back. She didn’t remember ever having seen it there before –

Can this really be my car?

The blanket was covered in dog hair. It smelled of stale sick. Wesley didn’t care. He was towelling her dry with it. She might as well have been an itinerant pony or a muck-drenched lurcher for all the pains he took to preserve her dignity. And when he got down to her toes, he threw aside the blanket and smacked her feet

–hard –
until she could feel it.

Only when she gasped (three times, four) did he stop, with a smile, and without apology.

He made her put on his jumper and his jacket –

The smell of them…

Like juniper and off-milk and pipe-smoke-tangerine-old-pelt-grandfather

– then he wrapped up her legs –like a tortilla –in the blanket.

There was no room inside that tiny car for anything. He flipped her seat back, lay back himself, pulled her feet onto his lap, rubbed them.

‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked, still shivering.

‘Why didn’t I what?’

He leaned forward, scrabbled around inside his coat pocket and removed a sweet, some matches and a cigarette stub.

He unfurled the sweet and popped it into her mouth.

He lit the cigarette for himself.

She pushed the sweet –

Barley sugar

– into her cheek, ‘Why didn’t you make a home there?’

Wesley obviously disliked this question.

‘I was involved in a dispute,’ he muttered, ‘with a foreman on a job… And you know what?’

She shook her head.

‘I should probably go out and find you some dock leaves, later…’ he opened his door and tossed the spent match into the gutter. ‘For the cuts,’ he added.

‘In Bow?’ she persisted.

He slammed the door shut.

‘Nope,’ he gave up evading her, ‘Holloway. He fell off a ladder.
Broke four ribs. So I ended up working on the markets in the East with this character called Trevor…’

Wesley inspected his cigarette, his bad hand still resting casually on her foot.

She felt his hand there. In that moment she
was
her foot.

‘Trevor was the potter you mentioned earlier…’ he lifted his bad hand and pulled open the ashtray on the dash –

Hand gone

‘He wasn’t the world’s most conscientious co-worker –not back then –but we were solid together for almost a year. It was alright for a while. Got a little…’ Wesley paused, ‘claustrophobic,’ he tapped the ash off his stub then rested his hand –without thinking –on her foot again –

Hand back

Jo shivered. Wesley misconstrued it as the cold, and began rubbing, distractedly, ‘Anyhow I got involved in some other stuff –at a pie and mash shop, releasing a few eels –and I fucked the situation up…’

He sniffed. He was starting to feel the cold himself. He grimly hunched his shoulders against its steady encroachments, continued talking to try and keep his mind off the breeze whistling through the crack in his side-window.

‘A long old while after, Trev pulled himself together and became a potter. At first just casual labour in one of the big Staffordshire factories –in the warehouse or something –then he gradually worked his way up. Got involved in some of the actual… the hands-on… the creative stuff…’

Wesley was distractedly rubbing his own arm with his smoking hand. Jo quickly pulled some of the blanket free and placed it, demurely, across his knees.

‘What happened then?’ she tentatively asked.

Wesley accepted the blanket without comment. He adjusted its placement slightly. He dragged on his cigarette.

‘We met again –years later –while I was Loitering near there. He looked me up. He was fairly desperate –and angry about some of the things that’d gone wrong –pissed off about… had a gambling problem. Marriage was…’

Wesley shrugged, choosing not to specify the exact locus of
Trevor’s irritability, ‘So we walked down to Devon together. Started talking about trying to do something special with all the stuff he’d learned in Staffordshire. Setting up our own pottery, maybe. Something old-fashioned, because Trev’s traditional to the core, but in the loveliest… in a very primitive… he has this overwhelming… an innocence. A real innocence. And that makes him hot-headed sometimes, which is a pity. A few weeks in each other’s company and we end up almost killing each other.’

Wesley shot her a look. He hadn’t made eye contact with her since he’d climbed into the car.

‘Was he violent?’ Jo whispered, frightened that if she spoke too loudly she might kill the story.

Wesley cleared his throat. Drew on his cigarette.

‘We built this traditional Anagama kiln,’ he continued, ‘or a round-about version of it; approximately four-hundred-and-fifty cubic feet in diameter…’ he exhaled, using both hands to outline its shape, ‘takes a couple of months to fill, ten days to pack, five days to fire, a week –at least –to cool…’

‘And this was Trevor’s idea?’

Wesley shifted in his seat, ‘You can flog it as art –that’s the clever thing –and folk’ll swallow it whole, because the entire set-up’s so
fantastically
arse about face…’

Wesley smiled at the thought. It was the first time she’d seen him smile properly –ever. She gazed at the smile, proprietorially.

‘For most potters,’ Wesley explained, ‘the clay is the crucial factor, the moulding, the glaze, the artistry. And that’s how it was for Trev, initially. He’d developed this really
precise
streak –never had it when we worked on the markets –don’t know where it came from, really. But it wasn’t right for him. It was part of the problem. He needed…’ Wesley pondered, for a moment, ‘… to exorcise it. Which is why the new techniques have been so liberating. Because now it’s not all about creating the perfect
object
so much as creating the most legitimate
process…
’

Wesley’s hand returned –under the blanket now –to Jo’s foot, and stroked it, unthinkingly, ‘Out of every fifty mugs or plates he sticks into that kiln, he gets –at best –fifteen back. And they are
fucked,
let me tell you. Crazy-looking things. All the glaze cracked. All the purity gone. Takes literally days to clean them. And Trevor
rages against it. He
rages.
But that’s… What he doesn’t quite understand yet is how that’s just as it
should
be, because it’s all about… the whole process is all about… not finish or perfection, but
turbulence…
’

‘Does he make a living at it?’

Wesley frowned at this question, then shrugged, as if he couldn’t be bothered trying to understand it, ‘The pieces that survive –and this is the whole point, really, the way I see it –the things that somehow
survive
this chaos are absolutely… they’re dazzling…’

That smile again

‘They’re without compare. They’re magical. Like old soldiers marching on VE day, proudly carrying their medals and their scars of battle.’

Josephine nodded.

‘To have a thing,’ Wesley explained, his cigarette stub burning down to nothing, ‘that isn’t so much an entity in the present sense –I mean entirely functional or anything –so much as an object with its whole history, its whole journey, physically
embedded…
’

‘And is Trevor happy?’

Jo immediately regretted this question. It seemed so… so…

Prissy

Wesley shrugged (not appearing, on the surface, to object). ‘He’s perfectly viable.’

Viable?

Josephine pondered this concept for a while. This word.

‘For Trevor,’ Wesley didn’t notice her marginal retreat, ‘for him it’s just a different kind of gambling. It’s another channel. It’s very physical.’

Wesley stubbed out his cigarette and squinted through the windscreen. ‘Looks like…
bollocks,
’ he shrank down in his seat, ‘it’s the Old Man. I recognise the glow of his torch. Cover me over with the blanket. He shouldn’t see me here.’

Wesley pushed himself down onto the floor, using the segment of the blanket he already had to cover himself as best he could. Jo stared at him confusedly, then at herself –his distinctive jacket wrapped so tightly around her –then out through the windscreen.

In the distance she saw a flashlight wavering. She pulled the
blanket off her legs and covered him more thoroughly, then took off the jacket, the jumper, wound down her window and peeked out, cautiously.

The cold teared her eyes up. She blinked. She focussed again.

It was Doc. He was walking unsteadily (either his feet were still a mess or he was slightly tipsy). As he drew even closer, she wound the window down further –but not too far –so that her whole face was now visible, and the top of her shoulder. She hoped the dark (and the condensation) would protect the car’s interior.

‘I had a gut feeling this was yours when we drove past it earlier,’ Doc shouted at her, kicking the tyre tread, ‘can’t you get the bugger started?’

Jo shook her head.

‘Did you try the points? They’re always the first thing to play up with a Mini.’

Jo nodded, ‘I did try them. But I think it might be the carburettor. It’s squealing. It went once before.’

‘Not with the AA, eh?’

She shook her head. Doc clucked to himself, ‘Hooch couldn’t possibly survive without it. Calls them at the drop of a hat. Got banned by the RAC for taking the piss. He’s useless with technical stuff.’

He peered over her shoulder and into the car. She straightened up a little to impede his view.

‘Shoes said he saw you a few hours back in the Lobster Smack,’ Doc continued benignly. ‘You should’ve come through to the bar. We were all in there, getting royally pissed up.’

Jo nodded again. ‘I should’ve,’ she said, ‘but I was very…’ she paused, embarrassed.

‘I brought you a bit of stuff over, anyway,’ Doc tactfully interrupted her, ‘a spare sleeping bag, a flask, a few sandwiches we had left. It’s a filthy night to be sleeping out if you’re not…’

‘That’s very kind…’ Jo smiled at him (he shrugged, as if momentarily resenting his own amiability) then she wound the window down further and pushed out her hands, ‘I’m actually in my…’

She glanced modestly towards her chest, ‘so it’s a little…’

Doc stepped back, circumspectly –

Pissed, he was

For certain

– then leaned forward, trepidatiously, from his new position (careful not to encroach even a half-inch further) and handed her each item, individually. The bag was a stretch, but she managed to pull it through, with a tug.

‘That’s Hooch’s. He’ll definitely be wanting it back first thing,’ Doc warned her, ‘it’s a good one.’

‘Of course,’ Jo nodded, ‘I’m very grateful to you, Doc.’

Used the name

Doc shrugged, ‘I only hope Shoes didn’t scare you off earlier. He said he saw you in the bathroom. He likes to use the Ladies when he’s had a few. Means no harm by it.’

Jo smiled, said nothing.

‘He went out and collected you some dock leaves. For the cuts. Wes always uses dock. He swears by it. And he wanted me to give you this; to pass the hours, he said.’

Doc offered her some large, glossy green leaves, and under these, a book –

Utah Blaine

Jo took them both, her heart almost missing a beat, immediately slipping the book –surreptitiously –down the side of her seat, ‘Well thank him from me, Doc.’

Doc nodded, ‘Better close that window before you lose all your heat.’

‘Thanks.’

Jo started winding. Doc turned away, paused –

Just please don’t ask…

– then spun back around to face her again.

‘So your police friend didn’t say anything important? Didn’t shed any interesting light on what was happening earlier?’

Jo froze. ‘
Uh…
’ She stopped winding and peeked evasively through the remaining gap. ‘No. Sorry.
No.
It was all slightly…’ she grimaced. He put his head to one side, as if he couldn’t quite hear her.

She removed her eyes from the gap and replaced them with her lips, ‘It was all just a little bit
complicated.
’ She ducked down, reconnecting her eyes with the gap to gauge his reaction.

Doc was shrugging, off-handedly.

‘Let’s catch up in the morning,’ he said, still not moving, but standing and watching her, calmly, as she placed her lips to the gap again, whispered,

‘Thanks, Doc, goodnight then…’ and gladly recommenced her last few inches of winding.

But he stayed.

He remained in place until that keen, water-drenched pane of glass firmly hit its snug rubber lining; still as an old egret in a fertile rice paddy; rigid as a doubting nun at her thrice-nightly prayers; quiet as a dishonest clerk creeping around after hours; firm as Gibraltar –and just as imperturbable –he held and he held and he kept on holding.

Thirty-one

They sat in a kind of anti-communion around the table; Katherine and Dewi at either end (making no physical or visual contact whatsoever), Ted and Arthur on opposite sides (their feet and shins occasionally knocking together). Nobody spoke a word. The atmosphere (although by no means every individual contributing to it) was sober.

Four places were set – Dewi had taken Wesley’s; knew damn well he had; didn’t care – but there was no sign, as yet, of the guest of honour. Dinner was burned. It sat congealing in the oven.

Ted politely stifled a yawn and shifted his foot (knocked Arthur’s boot, quickly shifted it back). He nodded a shy apology.

Where on earth
was
Wesley, anyway? He’d taken the precaution of ringing his own phone (which Wes was still in firm possession of – no answer, turned off) and then the Police Station (on first arriving at the bungalow). They claimed they’d released him an hour before.