Authors: Nicola Barker
‘I’m gung-ho, Gaff,’ she chuckled, hopping along, unsteadily, in her
fluffy, new boot, ‘I’m a
nutter,
a ditz, a turd, a ding-bat…’ she shrugged. ‘But that’s
corking,
mate, it’s peachy – it’s “all wool an’ a yard wide” as my old nan used to say – because here’s the
important
bit…’ she turned to face him, her eyes shining with pride, and enunciated very slowly – very
cleanly
– to ensure he understood ‘…that’s
exactly
how God loves me,
see
?’
‘But you’re being ridiculous…’ Kane was down on his hands and knees (his phone gripped, unsteadily, between his shoulder and his ear), digging through an assortment of junk in the back of an old wardrobe ‘…I mean he didn’t actually
say
anything, did he? He didn’t actually
mention
that we knew each other…?’
Pause
‘I know, but Beede’s not
like
that. I already told you, he has his own shit to deal with – trust me…’
Pause
‘Well if you’ll just
calm down
for a minute…’
Pause
(Scowling) ‘
Where,
exactly?’
Pause
‘
Why
not?’
Pause
‘The
parrot
?’ Kane burst out laughing. ‘Now you’re
really
being paranoid.’
Pause
‘I’m
not
laughing, I’m just…’
Pause
‘Fine. Yeah…Although I’m definitely not increasing the amount, because you’re actually doing really…’
Pause
‘
Listen.
You’re doing really
well.
There’s no need to jeopardise all the hard work we’ve put in just because…’
Pause
‘Okay. Well it’s your funeral…’ Kane rolled his eyes, straightened up, withdrew a smallish, oblong object wrapped up in newspaper from the wardrobe, crouched back on to his haunches and inspected his watch. ‘I know the area. I’ll look for your car. But just
calm down,
all right? And give it about half an hour…’
Pause
(More eye rolling) ‘I know.
Yup.
Bye.’
He threw down his phone and began unwrapping the parcel. As he pulled off the paper it became clear that the single object was in fact
two
objects which had been carefully stored away together. Kane smiled as he flipped them over to take a proper look. He stared at them both, intently. His smile slowly faded.
‘
Man.
But these are just
shit
,’ he murmured.
He held one up even closer to his face to inspect the finer detail –
‘Jeez.
This is
dreadful
…’
He held it at arm’s length again. ‘I mean I can barely even tell…’
His musings were interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming –
Eh?
He tossed the woodcuts back into the wardrobe, grabbed his phone, shoved it into his pocket, checked for his car keys and sprang to his feet.
‘Gaffar?’
he yelled, striding through the flat and out on to the landing (only pausing to grab a pop-tart from the toaster and stuff it, whole, into his mouth). ‘I’m
on
to you, you sneaky
fucker
…’
He bounced down the top three stairs, then ground to a sudden halt. There, just in front of him, stood Elen and Beede. Gazing up at him. Together.
Beede had his hand resting lightly –
Paternally?
– on Elen’s shoulder. She had her hair in two sweet plaits. She was wearing slim-fitting black boots.
Kane nearly choked on his pop-tart.
‘Sorry,’ he put up his hand to his mouth, ‘I thought you were someone else…’
‘Kelly’s brother died,’ Beede observed stiffly, trying the handle on his door, then realising – with a small start – that it was locked. ‘Did you know?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ Kane murmured, noticing a tiny, little blood blister on his father’s lip. ‘She rang me last night. It was all very sudden. Very quick…’
His eye shifted to Elen. She was standing at Beede’s side, completely at her ease, gently smiling up at him. She indicated, with her finger, to the side of her mouth. Kane frowned, then,
‘Oh
…’ He rubbed at his cheek.
Jam
‘Well that’s
something,
I suppose,’ Beede conceded as he retrieved the key from his coat pocket.
‘And a little more…
uh
…’ Elen pointed to her chin.
‘I actually need to have a quick word with you about Gaffar,’ Beede muttered. ‘Later, perhaps?’
‘Is something wrong?’ Kane enquired, still dabbing and swallowing. ‘Absolutely not,’ Beede frowned, as if shocked by the suggestion (by
Kane’s patent lack of
faith
in his Kurdish pal). ‘It’s a kind of…
well
…a kind of
cultural
issue.’
‘Cultural?’
Kane frowned.
Beede unlocked the door and pushed it open. He politely waved Elen inside and then promptly followed her, closing it – firmly – behind him.
‘Thanks.
Great.
Nice to see you, too,’ Kane muttered, remaining where he was for a while, scowling – deeply irked – like a schoolboy dismissed by a peremptory headmaster. Then he quietly descended the remaining stairs, inspected his teeth in the hallway mirror –
Urgh
– rubbed at them, vigorously, with his index finger and grabbed his ancient, grey, crombie from the coat-rack. He slowly put it on, listening out – quite nonchalantly, he felt – for any audible snatches of conversation from inside Beede’s flat.
‘…this weird, old…uh…
habit
I guess you’d call it,’ Elen was speaking, and her voice was much louder – much clearer – than Kane might’ve anticipated, ‘I mean this was
way
back when we very first met – before things got quite so…’ her voice quavered a little (did it? Or was she just bending down as she spoke – or
sitting
? Perhaps sitting down on the sofa?) ‘…so horribly
complicated
…’
‘Damn,’ Beede swore (making a rattling sound), ‘I’m all out of Anadin.’
(Kane visualised Beede’s First Aid tin – bright blue, rusty-hinged – which was generally stored on a top shelf in the kitchen).
‘I’ll run out and get you some…’
Elen’s voice grew still louder.
Kane sprang away from the door, panicked.
‘No. It really doesn’t
fmwah-fmwah.
I’m actually
fmwah-fmwah-fwah-fmwah.
’
Kane grimaced and drew closer to the door again. It sounded like Beede was filling a pan – or a kettle, perhaps – with water.
‘I thought we both agreed that you’d try and put your feet up,’ Elen gently chastised him, her voice growing fainter.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Beede insisted, ‘it’s much
fwah-wah-fmwah-fmwah-fwah.’
‘Well at least let me
fmwah-wah fwah-wah wah fmwah
,’ she demanded.
‘How
maddening,’
Beede suddenly exclaimed, ‘the washer’s playing up inside the cold tap…’
(Strange squeaking noise as the tap is manipulated.)
‘…It must’ve perished, I suppose…’
(Sound of cupboard door being opened and shut.)
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, ‘you were telling me about
Dory
– this strange habit of his.’
‘Oh…’ Elen sounded momentarily distracted.
‘Yes…
Well he’d just
fmwah-wah-wah fwah fmwah fmwah-wah fwah
…’ she returned – somewhat haltingly – to her anecdote, ‘I mean without
fmwah wah fwah fwah,
and when the person answered he’d tell them that [
her voice grew much clearer again
] he’d lived there, as a boy, and that I was his girlfriend, and that he’d told me all about it, and would they mind terribly if we just took a quick look around…’
‘You never mentioned this before,’ Beede’s voice suddenly sounded incredibly close – so much so that Kane leapt back towards the mirror again (where he frantically pretended to readjust his fringe).
‘I honestly hadn’t thought about it in years…’ Elen sounded guilty, ‘I mean he only ever did it a few times…’
‘How many times?’
(Beede again, still close, sounding rather tense.)
‘I don’t know – five, maybe six…’
‘And what part did
you
play, exactly, in this curious, little deception?’
Huh?
Kane frowned at what he took to be Beede’s unnecessarily cutting tone.
‘Did you simply go along with it?’
‘Yes.’ Elen responded simply, unequivocally. Kane smiled. He touched the back of his hand against his cheek, then glanced up and saw himself in the hallway mirror – the dreamy eyes, the goofy look – and dropped his hand, appalled.
‘At first I honestly
believed
him,’ she continued. ‘It sounds stupid now, I know, but I was completely taken in. I thought he
had
lived in those places. The first couple of times at least…’
‘And he never set you straight? You never interrogated him afterwards?’
‘No. Not that I can clearly recollect. We spoke mainly in German back then. My vocabulary was somewhat limited. And the relationship was new. It was far less…well,
vocal
…’ her voice petered out.
‘But that still doesn’t make any sense, Elen,’ Beede all-but snapped. ‘It’s illogical. How could he possibly have lived in those places when he was born and raised abroad?’ ‘But he wasn’t,’ Elen said calmly.
Pause
‘Pardon?’
‘He was born here, in England. His parents were Londoners. They emigrated to Germany when Isidore was a boy.’
‘Oh.’
(Beede sounded shocked.)
‘And in my own defence,’ she continued, ‘I suppose I was just a little more naive back then. Dory was always so plausible. And the whole thing was so bizarre, so out of character, so
unlike
him. You know yourself how straight he is, how repressed, how
law
-abiding…’
‘Yes.’
(Although Beede didn’t sound entirely convinced.)
‘And I guess,’ Elen persisted, ‘that I probably found it quite
funny
in a way.
Exciting,
even. We were young. Things weren’t nearly so…’ she cleared her throat ‘…so fraught between us back then.’
Her voice faded somewhat towards the second half of this speech. Kane leaned in closer to the door. It sounded like she was standing in the kitchen now.
‘The point is that
wah fwah-wah fmwah-wah fmwah
…’ Kane scowled, exasperated.
‘…I mean not in
years,
but then yesterday, out of the blue, he suddenly forced me to pull over the car, leapt out, and went to
wah fwah wah-fmwah wah-wah-fwah.
This tiny, little
fwah-wah-wah
…’
‘An
old
house, you say?’
Beede’s voice sounded more distant again, too.
‘Oldish. But not
that
old.’
‘Who answered?’
‘This young girl – this very
fmwah-fwah-wah wah fwah.’
Kane placed his ear directly against the crack in the door.
‘So what did you do?’
‘I didn’t really know
what
to do. I just grabbed
wah-fmwah wah fwah fmwah fmwah-wah.
I mean it’s not that I didn’t
trust
him…’
‘Did she show you around?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did he seem quite…’ Beede paused, judiciously ‘…quite
himself
?’
Elen paused, too.
‘Yes. I mean…
yes.
A little manic, perhaps.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well he suddenly came out with all this amazing
detail
about how the place had been when his old aunt had lived there. It was incredible. How he’d built this
wah fmwah fmwah-fwah-wah
…’
Kane rolled his eyes.
‘…Even all this crazy stuff about his aunt being a very strict Catholic, and how she’d had crucifixes hung up everywhere, at which point the girl – Gaynor – who certainly appeared to be taking the whole thing with quite a pinch of salt – although maybe that was just
me,
I mean
my
paranoia – suddenly told this story about how when they’d first bought the place there’d been all these marks on the wallpaper – shadows – from where crucifixes had obviously been hung before…’
‘Perhaps he’d noticed one of those shadows as you were walking around?’
(Sound of refrigerator opening.)
‘No. They’d redecorated. This was
years
ago…’
(Clanking sound.)
‘Does this
fmwah
smell all right to you?’ she enquired. ‘It’s the day after its sell-by date…’
(More clanking.)
‘There should be a new one. Hang on…’
(Still more clanking.)
Pause
(Sound of teaspoon rattling around inside a mug.)
‘What you need to bear in mind,’ Beede pontificated, ‘is that even twenty or so years ago a standard Catholic home would’ve had
fmwah-wah fmwah-wah
on
fmwah-wah
all over the house…’
‘Of course. But it was just…’
‘Is that pale enough?’
‘Yes.’
(More stirring. Sound of objects being placed on to a tin tray. Clanking sound. Noise of refrigerator closing.)
‘I don’t mean to put a damper on things,’ Beede’s voice grew much louder, ‘but you’d be astonished how easy it is for someone with a very basic knowledge of human psychology – or in possession of certain behavioural techniques – to infer things from an environment, and simply – by the power of suggestion, by picking up subtle
hints
…’
‘I’m fully aware of that, Danny…’
Danny?!
Kane flinched at Elen’s casually abbreviated use of his father’s Christian name.
‘…But when we went into the tiny living-room Dory walked straight over to the fireplace. He said he’d carved his initials there, as a boy…’
‘Inside
the fireplace?’
‘No. In the stonework around the side of the chimney breast.’
‘Well perhaps he’d already noticed something scratched there?’
‘No. It wouldn’t have been possible. I mean not from the
angle
…’
‘Sorry. Is that…? I’ll just…Thanks.’
(Sound of small table being cleared off and moved over towards the sofa.)
‘Were his initials there, then?’
‘Yes. Well,
no.’