Behindlings (48 page)
She thought for a moment, ‘Think I’ll call it…’
She fell silent, typed…
BETTER WATCH YOUR STEP, ARTHUR
‘I don’t get it,’ Ted said.
‘Of course you don’t,’ Katherine flapped her hand, dismissively.
She moved the nipple to Start, rolled up the menu to
Shut down,
clicked on it, waited…
‘And you
are
well placed,’ she said, tapping her foot, filling in time, ‘even if you haven’t quite realised it yet.’
Ted frowned confusedly, as she cocked her head, slid her hand rapidly down the side of the laptop and turned it off. It bleeped in protest. She abruptly shut the lid and moved over towards the washing up.
Ted moved with her, glancing anxiously towards the door.
‘Mr Arthur Young is back,’ she whispered, twisting around, grabbing Ted’s face between her hands, pulling it down towards her lips and giving the tip of his snout a gentle kiss, ‘I think it’s about time baby bear went home to bed.’
By the time Arthur had negotiated the tiny – but inexplicably cumbersome – front gate, had clambered through the garden and marched onto the verandah (the house was painted a funny colour – the mint of the mint-choc-chip he remembered devouring on idyllic caravanning holidays in Minehead as a kid), the Welshman appeared to have completely evaporated.
The bungalow – as he entered – had an unoccupied feel about it (the smell of dust, the creak of the door), and there was only a single – ineffectual – source of light; a standard lamp with a shabby frill, standing lopsidedly in the far corner.
Arthur peered around, wiping his feet on the mat, stepping inside and pushing the door nearly – but not –
Not
– quite shut.
He still couldn’t determine the Welshman’s exact whereabouts.
The room was full
(packed
full) of furniture. Good stuff. Wooden pieces (he couldn’t, for the most part, tell if they were modern or antique). It had the air of a showroom. A store-room. The boards echoed hollowly, under his feet.
He flashed back to the agency –
The gentle agent stamping his foot in that dreamily aquatic grey-blue light
‘Close the door.’
Arthur jerked around sharply at the sound of his voice. It seemed closer than was really feasible. His arms stiffened, defensively, his heart – he noticed – was pumping violently.
The huge Welshman was crouched down low, directly to the left of him –
Hackles
He seemed to be –
Hunting
– fiddling around with something –
Knife?
Gun?
Arrow?
Spear?
Arthur blinked and stared harder –
Eyes oiled up with fear
He blinked a second time, more in surprise than anything.
Dewi had struck a match and was busy –
Good Lord
– lighting a fire. A log fire. He was down on his knees, holding out a long, thin strip of –
Tallow?
Was it?
– something keen and flammable (burning brightly at its tip) and poking it into the heart of a bundle of kindling.
Arthur closed the door –as he’d been instructed –but remained in place (like a nervous sentry to his own imminent departure).
‘I find I freeze up when I leave her,’ Dewi said, with a shake –
Was that a shake?
– in his voice.
‘She certainly has an extremely efficient underfloor heating system,’ Arthur conceded, then despised himself for being so… so…
Heartless
So dispassionate. So poker-faced.
He struggled to make up for it. But they were two men –strangers –united only –in the main –by their hatred of another –
There are more outlandish things to have in common, I guess A common fuck, for one
Arthur tensed his knees, guiltily, ‘She’s an extraordinary woman,’ he murmured, ‘and… and strong…’
The grip of her thighs, like a pair of pliers
The tickle of her tongue
The slap of her soft-white stomach
He shook his head, swallowed.
Who am I?
D.H. bloody… uh…?
It was as if another –far more emotionally reactive –creature was temporarily conducting his thoughts for him (the real Arthur Young was now way off camera –taking it easy –in the canteen –drinking filter coffee –eating a sandwich –feet up –reading the classifieds in the local paper).
‘She’s had to be tough,’ Dewi murmured, holding the flaming stick in place until the twigs began smoking, then crackling; until the flame finally took.
He remained –hunkered down –on his haunches. ‘I’ve loved her since the very beginning,’ he whispered, ‘and she can fuck the whole town if needs be, because it won’t make any difference to me. I was here before all of the slander and the bullshit and the betrayals, and I will be here long after.’
Arthur took a few unsteady steps into the room. He leaned his hand onto a free-standing chest of drawers and struck what he hoped to be a –
Please don’t hit me
I’m on a pension
I have a disa… disa… disa…
– sympathetic posture.
‘How long?’ he asked. His voice was even croakier than usual. He cleared his throat, exaggeratedly. Dewi reached behind him and pulled a small, padded footrest in closer to the fireplace. He perched himself upon it (like a full-grown elephant sat on a drum during a badly-choreographed circus performance). He kept his back to Arthur.
‘She was seventeen,’ he said.
‘That’s a
hell
of a long time ago,’ Arthur murmured (impressed by the sheer breadth of this human tragedy), then suddenly appreciated how ungallant he must’ve sounded.
Dewi nodded (he hadn’t noticed). ‘Thirteen years,’ he said.
‘But how…’
Arthur was suddenly intrigued by the basic practicalities –began quietly calculating –
‘So if Wesley wrote the book three years ago… how on earth did the graffiti stay in place all that while? An entire decade? Didn’t it fade? Wasn’t it ever painted over?’
Dewi shrugged. His back was curved. His elbows pressed deep dimples into his muscular knees. His huge hands cupped his face.
‘In the clock of the heart,’ he murmured, his accent thickening with emotion, ‘thirteen years is a single
tick.
’
Arthur glanced behind him, towards the door –
How long am I staying here?
‘Sit,’ Dewi said, and pointed towards a straight-backed armchair at the other side of the fire.
The wood was smoking heavily. Arthur could smell beech-pine-
fir.
He flashed back to Epping Forest –
The crackle of needles, underfoot
The yaffle of the woodpecker
The bark of the deer
– then came to again, seated –
How long have I been here?
He felt the faded velvet of the chair’s upholstery, the polished wood at the tip of its arm. He stared at Dewi’s magnificent profile –
A bison
A bear
– gilt-dipped in the fitful yellow of the fire’s flickering.
‘Was it true?’ he found himself asking. ‘What they… what they…’
KATHERINE (whore) TURPIN ABORTED HER OWN FATHER’S BASTARD
Couldn’t say it
‘What they wrote about her –the graffiti?’
Dewi shook his head, ‘Katherine had a reputation, and she was no angel, but she was hardly…’ he shrugged, ‘and her father was a decent man –much loved…’ Dewi nearly smiled, remembering, ‘a great educationalist. Energetic. Motivated. Enthusiastic. A real innovator. A real
improver…
’
A long silence.
‘But then there’s never smoke without…’ he indicated towards the hearth, then rubbed his knees, resignedly, ‘and I suppose that’s
what people thought. And they weren’t entirely… they weren’t absolutely wrong to think it, either.’
Arthur struggled to comprehend this answer. He tried to recall whatever it was that Wesley had written on the subject –
Hard to bring it to…
Hard to conjure…
– all the stuff about perimeters; those ‘savagely drawn margins of small-town orthodoxy…’ ‘Who will we side with, ultimately? Those coddled straight-jackets, walled in by their own conventionality? Or the giant, impassive gush of wave and foam and spray –fearless, remorseless,
free…?
’
Sheer hyperbole
KATHERINE (whore) TURPIN ABORTED HER OWN
FATHER’S BASTARD
Fact
Scrawled onto the grey concrete of that tall sea wall. One foot by seven. Contravening just about every…
Did salt actually work as a preservative for graffiti?
And in mentioning it –
Back to the point, Arthur
– in mentioning it Wesley had
celebrated
that contravention (hadn’t he?). Under the guise of celebrating her. Had made her humiliation a kerbstone, a signpost, a
landmark
attraction on his map of the estuary –
A
Rubicon
for the people Following.
‘She slept with her
father?
’
He couldn’t help himself.
Dewi smiled, tiredly, ‘No. That’s the whole… it was never as simple… never as
literal.
I thought you people were meant to be fond of riddles.’
You people
Arthur grimaced, sourly, then tried to think.
‘Her father was the local headmaster…’
Dewi nodded.
‘… and her mother was active in the church in some capacity?’
Dewi rubbed his two huge hands together. ‘Low church. They were descended from Dutch stock.’
‘So where are they now? Do you know? Do you keep in touch?’
‘The father’s in Scotland. He runs a boys’ boarding school there. The mother was a missionary –New Guinea. Died last year. Pancreatic cancer.’
‘But Katherine stayed here? Why?’
‘Because she wouldn’t walk away from it… and… and because if she stayed, nobody got away with anything.’
‘Least of all you, eh?’
Dewi shook his head, ‘Least of all her. I was the weak link. I made things worse by caring about all the wrong things. I deserved to suffer.’
‘But the graffiti’s still there, you say? After –what is it –thirteen years? And it still
matters?
Isn’t that…?’
Dewi smiled, leaned forward, poked the fire. ‘It’s a landmark.’
Arthur leaned forward himself, in his chair, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Somebody must’ve hated her. Who was it? Do you know? Did you ever find out?’
Dewi shrugged, ‘It’s a small town. People feel things deeply here.’
‘And you didn’t ever feel tempted to defend her in any way?’
Dewi twisted around on his stool, gazed at Arthur, blankly. ‘I did,’ he said, ‘I painted over it. Twice. She begged me not to. We’d been dating for over a year when it all first blew up. She told me there was no truth in it and I believed her. She said if you destroy a thing it gives it more power. She thought no one would dream of taking it seriously. But she was naive. And she was wrong. And I did paint over it. And she hated me for it –she hated that conformist side of me. She took it as a lack of faith. Which it was. And then when it came back –which it did –it was like…’ he turned towards the fire again, ‘like a splinter. Under the skin. Fighting,
pushing,
to get out again.’
Arthur closed his eyes for a second. ‘It must’ve…’ he visualised the splinter. The image touched him. ‘It must’ve
hurt.
’
Dewi nodded, slowly, ‘At first, perhaps, but it grew… it grew familiar,’ he murmured, ‘and after a while I resigned myself to it. It was my own mess, my own fault. I learned that to love someone is to accept everything. Even the bullshit. The self-deceit. Even the lying. The graffiti meant nothing. It was a public act, yet a strangely
private
thing. It was faded… it was
history –
part of
the grain,’ Dewi slid his flat hand through the air, unthinkingly, ‘part of the weft, the
weave
of my life with Katherine…’
‘Then Wesley happened along,’ Arthur interrupted, ‘and made it all feel fresh again.’
Dewi’s profile hardened. ‘I think he imagined that he was championing her in some way,’ he shook his head, as if unable to comprehend, ‘but it was an act of such staggering… such revolting
vandalism.
He used her…’
Dewi glanced over at Arthur, fleetingly, ‘Katherine was always
used
you see.’
Arthur knotted his fingers together, rested them on his lap, covered his crotch, unconsciously.
‘The point was,’ Dewi turned back to the fire, ‘the words he read on that wall –the ones he repeated in his stupid book –took no account of
anything.
He pretended he was defending her, but all he really did was make her into some kind of
tourist
attraction. He made her the same as… he pulled her into
his
story. He made her into
him.
’
‘God I know how that feels,’ Arthur whispered, covering his face with his hands, falling back into his chair again, ‘I
know that pain.
’
Dewi remained motionless. Arthur almost considered repeating what he’d whispered. Louder –
Louder
For the drama
– but he held off.
‘Katherine’s been through the fire,’ Dewi murmured, ‘and she’s grown very accustomed to the burn of it. I’ve watched her acclimatise. I’ve seen her skin harden. But after Wesley, I finally saw her do something I never thought she’d do. I saw her
becoming
the lie. I saw her
living
it. And he did that to her.
He
made that happen.’
Arthur nodded –
Yes he did