Behindlings. Nicola Barker
a vexatious detail that had not previously occurred to him –while Ted waved to a passerby through the agency’s large, exquisitely high-polished picture window. It was the third time he’d done so in as many minutes.
‘You seem to know everybody around here,’ Wesley observed drily, turning his head to peer outside, ‘it must be very trying.’
‘Trying? Why?’ Ted didn’t understand. ‘I find people their homes. It’s an essential… it’s a quint-essential service.’
‘I get your point,’ Wesley puckered his lips slightly, to try and stop an inadvertent grin from sneaking out and plastering itself –with unapologetic candour –all over his mouth. Then, in a bid to distract Ted’s attention, he suddenly pointed, ‘There’s a woman. Do you see her? Over in the Wimpy. Sitting in the window, directly opposite the Old Man.’
‘The sun’s in my eyes,’ Ted squinted, then moved to the left a fraction. ‘Ah… Yes. The one in the sweatshirt? Short hair? Eating a doughnut? Looks like a boy?’
‘That’s her.’
‘Who is she?’
Wesley shrugged, ‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’
He glanced around him, momentarily nonplussed. It was a neat office. Ted was neat. In fact he was immaculately presented. He wore a dark grey suit from Next, a spotless white shirt and a silk tie with an image of Sylvester the Cat spewed repeatedly in full technicolor onto a noxious, salmon pink background. His two shoes shone like heavily glacé’ed morello cherries.
‘So… Ted, was it?’
Ted nodded.
‘So Ted, are you the boss of this agency?’
Ted did a humourful double-take, ‘Do I look like the boss?’
‘I don’t know. How does the boss look?’
‘Different. Older. Shorter. Brown hair. Glasses. Huge moustache.’ Ted was a strawberry blond.
‘I knew a man like you once,’ Wesley observed, rather ominously, casually flipping through the sheets of property details again. ‘He looked like you, had the same cheerful… no, altruistic notions. Always beautifully turned-out. Then one day he became fascinated by pigeons’ feet, and that was the end of him.’ Ted tried to look unfazed by this strangely baroque influx of information. He almost succeeded.
‘He’d travel around,’ Wesley elucidated, ‘catching stray pigeons and giving them pedicures. He made special splints from old lolly sticks. Eventually he even began constructing his own, tiny, perfectly executed false limbs. Somebody made a documentary about his work and tried to sell it to Channel 5, but I don’t think they bought it. He was involved in radical causes. It frightened the shit out of them.’
Wesley glanced up. Ted was rubbing his clean-shaven jaw with his nimble fingers in such a way as to indicate a certain want of credulity. Wesley scowled, irritated. ‘I’m perfectly serious. He simply couldn’t abide the sight of a bird with a limp. He was mad about feet. Birds’ feet. Loathed human feet, though. If you pulled off your socks in front of him he’d break out into a sweat. It was tragic.’ Wesley gave the forefinger and thumb on his good hand a cursory lick to improve his turning power. ‘Pigeons aren’t indigenous to Britain,’ he observed, helpfully, ‘and that was his beef. His argument was that they were kept domestically, originally, but then they strayed or were abandoned. Yet somehow they were canny enough to adapt and survive. That was partly why he felt such a powerful connection with them. He was temporarily fostered himself as a kid…’
Wesley paused for a moment to inspect a particular sheet, frowned, then continued turning the pages, ‘People think factory farming is a modern phenomenon, but pigeons were kept by the Romans in the fourth century BC inside these huge, airless towers. They had their legs broken and their wings clipped to prevent them from moving…’, he cleared his throat. ‘This friend of mine waged a campaign against lime-use. People put it on their windowsills. Extremely common in the 1970s. Very cruel. Melts the bird’s toes…
‘The point I’m making…’ Wesley stopped leafing and paused for a minute, ‘is that he was actually ridiculously sensitive, underneath all that other stuff. Underneath that thick layer of poise and helpfulness and affability…
‘Right,’ he passed Ted a sheet, ‘this is the place.’
Ted took the sheet and glanced at it, his mind still fully occupied by images of lime and feet and feathers. After a few seconds, though, his eyes cleared and widened. He shook his head. He began to snigger, nervously. ‘You can’t be…’ he managed eventually, shaking his head and trying vainly to hand the sheet back again.
Wesley scowled. He would not take it. ‘What’s so funny?’
Ted’s mirth slowly evaporated. He stared intently at Wesley for a moment, struggling to tell if he was sincere. But he couldn’t tell. Wesley’s expression was completely unreadable. He was a human hieroglyphic.
‘This is her house,’ Ted said, finally. ‘She’s renting out the spare bedroom. Shared use of bathroom and kitchen facilities. I’m only handling it as a personal favour.’
‘Whose house?’ Wesley sounded perfectly innocent. Benign. Casual.
‘Whose house?’ he repeated, after a pause.
Ted pointed at the printed details: ‘This is Katherine Turpin’s house. This is the house of the local woman whose life you ruined.’
A short silence followed, punctuated, briefly, by Wesley’s stomach rumbling.
‘Blow me,’ Wesley finally expostulated (almost convincingly), ‘that’s some crazy coincidence. I suppose we’d better go and take a look, then, hadn’t we?’
He stood up. Ted didn’t move a muscle.
‘Take me there,’ Wesley ordered, reaching over to grab Ted’s jacket from the back of his chair, bundling it up into a compact ball, and throwing it at him.
‘You don’t know me…’ Josephine said, squeezing her way between the plastic bench and its table.
‘I don’t know you,’ Doc affirmed, not even looking up at her, but applying all his energy to dissolving the foam on his coffee by stirring at it vigorously with the back end of a knife. The foam wouldn’t dissolve though. Too dense. Too soapy.
He was occupying a window kiosk in the Wimpy. Dennis sat outside, tied to a lamppost, his snout pushed mournfully against the glass, his breath steaming up the window in small, cloudy patches.
‘My name’s Josephine,’ she said, sitting down.
‘Why all this foam?’ Doc muttered, not anticipating an answer.
‘That’s a cappuccino. I believe it’s prepared with frothy milk.’
Doc finally glanced up and inspected Josephine. He frowned slightly. He couldn’t pretend to understand this irritating modern phenomenon of girls who dressed like boys. Did it mean she hated men? Was she sexually deviant? Was she frigid? Was she frightened? Was she predatory? Either way, she made him feel old and alienated and uneasy.
‘Who made you an authority?’ he asked curtly.
Josephine didn’t respond at once. First, she picked up a napkin and neatly turned over each of its four comers –double-checking the sharpness of the fold, in each instance.
‘I’m hardly an authority,’ she murmured, unfolding the napkin again, smoothing it out with the flat of her palm and then shoving it away. Doc ignored her fidgetings. He occupied himself instead by staring out of the window and over the road towards the estate agency.
‘Do you think he’s only after information,’ Josephine queried, leaning forward, pushing both elbows onto the table, cupping her neat chin inside her two immaculately clean hands (her short, white nails