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  NICOLA BARKER

  Heading Inland

  Dedication

  For my mother

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Dedication

  Inside Information

  G-String

  The Three Button Trick

  Wesley:

  Blisters

  Braces

  Mr Lippy

  The Piazza Barberini

  Popping Corn

  Water Marks

  Back to Front

  Limpets

  Bendy-Linda

  Gifts

  Parker Swells

  By the same author

  Praise

  Thanks

  Copyright

  About the publisher

  Inside Information

  Martha’s social worker was under the impression that by getting herself pregnant, Martha was looking for an out from a life of crime.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  ‘First thing I ever nicked,’ Martha bragged, when her social worker was initially assigned to her, ‘very first thing I ever stole was a packet of Lil-lets. I told the store detective I took them as a kind of protest. You pay 17½ per cent VAT on every single box. Men don’t pay it on razors, you know, which is absolutely bloody typical.’

  ‘But you stole other things, too, on that occasion, Martha.’

  ‘Fags and a bottle of Scotch. So what?’ she grinned. ‘Pay VAT on those too, don’t you?’

  Martha’s embryo was unhappy about its assignment to Martha. Early on, just after conception, it appealed to the higher body responsible for its selection and placement. This caused something of a scandal in the After-Life. The World-Soul was consulted – a democratic body of pin-pricks of light, an enormous institution – which came, unusually enough, to a rapid decision.

  ‘Tell the embryo,’ they said, ‘hard cheese.’

  The embryo’s social worker relayed this information through a system of vibrations – a language which embryos alone in the Living World can produce and receive. Martha felt these conversations only as tiny spasms and contractions.

  Being pregnant was good, Martha decided, because store detectives were much more sympathetic when she got caught. Increasingly, they let her off with a caution after she blamed her bad behaviour on dodgy hormones.

  The embryo’s social worker reasoned with the embryo that all memories of the After-Life and feelings of uncertainty about placement were customarily eradicated during the trauma of birth. This was a useful expedient. ‘Naturally,’ he added, ‘the nine-month wait is always difficult, especially if you’ve drawn the short straw in allocation terms, but at least by the time you’ve battled your way through the cervix, you won’t remember a thing.’

  The embryo replied, snappily, that it had never believed in the maxim that Ignorance is Bliss. But the social worker (a corgi in its previous incarnation) re-stated that the World Soul’s decision was final.

  As a consequence, the embryo decided to take things into its own hands. It would communicate with Martha while it still had the chance and offer her, if not an incentive, at the very least a moral imperative.

  Martha grew larger during a short stint in Wormwood Scrubs. She was seven months gone on her day of release. The embryo was now a well-formed foetus, and, if its penis was any indication, it was a boy. He calculated that he had, all things being well, eight weeks to change the course of Martha’s life.

  You see, the foetus was special. He had an advantage over other, similarly situated, disadvantaged foetuses. This foetus had Inside Information.

  In the After-Life, after his sixth or seventh incarnation, the foetus had worked for a short spate as a troubleshooter for a large pharmaceutical company. During the course of his work and research, he had stumbled across something so enormous, something so terrible about the World-Soul, that he’d been compelled to keep this information to himself, for fear of retribution.

  The rapidity of his assignment as Martha’s future baby was, in part, he was convinced, an indication that the World-Soul was aware of his discoveries. His soul had been snatched and implanted in Martha’s belly before he’d even had a chance to discuss the matter rationally. In the womb, however, the foetus had plenty of time to analyse his predicament. It was a cover-up! He was being gagged, brainwashed and railroaded into another life sentence on earth.

  In prison, Martha had been put on a sensible diet and was unable to partake of the fags and the sherry and the Jaffa cakes which were her normal dietary staples. The foetus took this opportunity to consume as many vital calories and nutrients as possible. He grew at a considerable rate, exercised his knees, his feet, his elbows, ballooned out Martha’s belly with nudges and pokes.

  In his seventh month, on their return home, the foetus put his plan into action. He angled himself in Martha’s womb, at just the right angle, and with his foot, gave the area behind Martha’s belly button a hefty kick. On the outside, Martha’s belly was already a considerable size. Her stomach was about as round as it could be, and her navel, which usually stuck inwards, had popped outwards, like a nipple.

  By kicking the inside of her navel at just the correct angle, the foetus – using his Inside Information – had successfully popped open the lid of Martha’s belly button like it was an old-fashioned pill-box.

  Martha noticed that her belly button was ajar while she was taking a shower. She opened its lid and peered inside. She couldn’t have been more surprised. Under her belly button was a small, neat zipper, constructed out of delicate bones. She turned off the shower, grabbed hold of the zipper and pulled it. It unzipped vertically, from the middle of her belly to the top. Inside, she saw her foetus, floating in brine. ‘Hello,’ the foetus said. ‘Could I have a quick word with you, please?’

  ‘This is incredible!’ Martha exclaimed, closing the zipper and opening it again. The foetus put out a restraining hand. ‘If you’d just hang on a minute I could tell you how this was possible . . .’

  ‘It’s so weird!’ Martha said, closing the zipper and getting dressed.

  Martha went to Tesco’s. She picked up the first three items that came to hand, unzipped her stomach and popped them inside. On her way out, she set off the alarms – the bar-codes activated them, even from deep inside her – but when she was searched and scrutinized and interrogated, no evidence could be found of her hidden booty. Martha told the security staff that she’d consider legal action if they continued to harass her in this way.

  When she got home, Martha unpacked her womb. The foetus, squashed into a corner, squeezed up against a tin of Spam and a packet of sponge fingers, was intensely irritated by what he took to be Martha’s unreasonable behaviour.

  ‘You’re not the only one who has a zip, you know,’ he said. ‘All pregnant women have them; it’s only a question of finding out how to use them, from the outside, gaining the knowledge. But the World-Soul has kept this information hidden since the days of Genesis, when it took Adam’s rib and reworked it into a zip with a pen-knife.’

  ‘Shut it,’ Martha said. ‘I don’t want to hear another peep from you until you’re born.’

  ‘But I’m trusting you,’ the foetus yelled, ‘with this information. It’s my salvation!’

  She zipped up.

  Martha went shopping again. She shopped sloppily at first, indiscriminately, in newsagents, clothes shops, hardware stores, chemists. She picked up what she could and concealed it in her belly.

  The foetus grew disillusioned. He re-opened negotiations with his social worker. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know something about the World-Soul which I’m willing to divulge to my earth-parent Martha if you don’t abort me straight away.’

  ‘You’re too big now,’ the so
cial worker said, fingering his letter of acceptance to the Rotary Club which preambled World-Soul membership. ‘And anyway, it strikes me that Martha isn’t much interested in what you have to say.’

  ‘Do you honestly believe,’ the foetus asked, ‘that any woman on earth in her right mind would consider a natural birth if she knew that she could simply unzip?’

  The social worker replied coldly: ‘Women are not kangaroos, you cheeky little foetus. If the World Soul has chosen to keep the zipper quiet then it will have had the best of reasons for doing so.’

  ‘But if babies were unzipped and taken out when they’re ready,’ the foetus continued, ‘then there would be no trauma, no memory loss. Fear of death would be a thing of the past. We could eradicate the misconception of a Vengeful God.’

  ‘And all the world would go to hell,’ the social worker said.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  The foetus waited for a reply, but none came.

  Martha eventually sorted out her priorities. She shopped in Harrods and Selfridges and Liberty’s. She became adept at slotting things of all conceivable shapes and sizes into her belly. Unfortunately, the foetus himself was growing quite large. After being unable to fit in a spice rack, Martha unzipped and addressed him directly. ‘Is there any possibility,’ she asked, ‘that I might be able to take you out prematurely so that there’d be more room in there?’

  The foetus stared back smugly. ‘I’ll come out,’ he said firmly, ‘when I’m good and ready.’

  Before she could zip up, he added, ‘And when I do come out, I’m going to give you the longest and most painful labour in Real-Life history. I’m going to come out sideways, doing the can-can.’

  Martha’s hand paused, momentarily, above the zipper. ‘Promise to come out very quickly,’ she said, ‘and I’ll nick you some baby clothes.’

  The foetus snorted in a derisory fashion. ‘Revolutionaries,’ he said, ‘don’t wear baby clothes. Steal me a gun, though, and I’ll fire it through your spleen.’

  Martha zipped up quickly, shocked at this vindictive little bundle of vituperation she was unfortunate enough to be carrying. She smoked an entire packet of Marlboro in one sitting, and smirked, when she unzipped, just slightly, at the coughing which emerged.

  The foetus decided that he had no option but to rely on his own natural wit and guile to foil both his mother and the forces of the After-Life. He began to secrete various items that Martha stole in private little nooks and crannies about her anatomy.

  On the last night of his thirty-sixth week, he put his plan into action. In his arsenal: an indelible pen, a potato, a large piece of cotton from the hem of a dress, a thin piece of wire from the supports of a bra, all craftily reassembled. In the dead of night, while Martha was snoring, he gradually worked the zip open from the inside, and did what he had to do.

  The following morning, blissfully unaware of the previous night’s activities, Martha went out shopping to Marks and Spencer’s. She picked up some Belgian chocolates and a bottle of port, took hold of her zipper and tried to open her belly. It wouldn’t open. The zipper seemed smaller and more difficult to hold.

  ‘That bastard,’ she muttered, ‘must be jamming it up from the inside.’ She put down her booty and headed for the exit. On her way out of the shop, she set off the alarms.

  ‘For Chrissakes!’ she told the detective, ‘I’ve got nothing on me!’ And for once, she meant it.

  Back home, Martha attacked her belly with a pair of nail scissors. But the zip wasn’t merely jammed, it was meshing and merging and disappearing, fading like the tail end of a bruise. She was frazzled. She looked around for her cigarettes. She found her packet and opened it. The last couple had gone, and instead, inside, was a note.

  Martha, [the note said] I have made good my escape, fully intact. I sewed a pillow into your belly. On the wall of your womb I’ve etched and inked an indelible bar-code. Thanks for the fags.

  Love, Baby.

  ‘But you can’t do that!’ Martha yelled. ‘You don’t have the technology!’ She thought she heard a chuckle, behind her. She span around. On the floor, under the table, she saw a small lump of afterbirth, tied up into a neat parcel by an umbilical cord. She could smell a whiff of cigarette smoke. She thought she heard laughter, outside the door, down the hall. She listened intently, but heard nothing more.

  G-String

  Ever fallen out with somebody simply because they agreed with you? Well, this is exactly what happened to Gillian and her pudgy but reliable long-term date, Mr Kip.

  They lived separately in Canvey Island. Mr Kip ran a small but flourishing insurance business there. Gillian worked for a car-hire firm in Grays Thurrock. She commuted daily.

  Mr Kip – he liked to be called that, an affectation, if you will – was an ardent admirer of the great actress Katharine Hepburn. She was skinny and she was elegant and she was sparky and she was intelligent. Everything a girl should be. She was old now, too, Gillian couldn’t help thinking, but naturally she didn’t want to appear a spoilsport so she kept her lips sealed.

  Gillian was thirty-four, a nervous size sixteen, had no cheekbones to speak of and hair which she tried to perm. God knows she tried. She was the goddess of frizz. She frizzed but she did not fizz. She was not fizzy like Katharine. At least, that’s what Mr Kip told her.

  Bloody typical, isn’t it? When a man chooses to date a woman, long term, who resembles his purported heroine in no way whatsoever? Is it safe? Is it cruel? Is it downright simple-minded?

  Gillian did her weekly shopping in Southend. They had everything you needed there. Of course there was the odd exception: fishing tackle, seaside mementos, insurance, underwear. These items she never failed to purchase in Canvey Island itself, just to support local industry.

  A big night out was on the cards. Mr Kip kept telling her how big it would be. A local Rotary Club do, and Gillian was to be Mr Kip’s special partner, he was to escort her, in style. He was even taking the cloth off his beloved old Aston Martin for the night to drive them there and back. And he’d never deigned to do that before. Previously he’d only ever taken her places in his H-reg Citroën BX.

  Mr Kip told Gillian that she was to buy a new frock for this special occasion. Something, he imagined, like that glorious dress Katharine Hepburn wore during the bar scene in her triumph, Bringing Up Baby.

  Dutifully, Gillian bought an expensive dress in white chiffon which didn’t at all suit her. Jeanie – twenty-one with doe eyes, sunbed-brown and weighing in at ninety pounds – told Gillian that the dress made her look like an egg-box. All lumpyhumpy. It was her underwear, Jeanie informed her – If only! Gillian thought – apparently it was much too visible under the dress’s thin fabric. Jeanie and Gillian were conferring in The Lace Bouquet, the lingerie shop on Canvey High Street where Jeanie worked.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Jeanie offered, ‘all in one lace bodysuit, right? Stretchy stuff. No bra. No knickers. It’ll hold you in an’ everything.’ Jeanie held up the prospective item. Bodysuits, Gillian just knew, would not be Mr Kip’s idea of sophisticated. She shook her head. She looked down at her breasts. ‘I think I’ll need proper support,’ she said, grimacing.

  Jeanie screwed up her eyes and chewed at the tip of her thumb. ‘Bra and pants, huh?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Although keen not to incur Jeanie’s wrath, Gillian picked out the kind of bra she always wore, in bright, new white, and a pair of matching briefs.

  Jeanie ignored the bra. It was functional. Fair enough. But the briefs she held aloft and proclaimed, ‘Passion killers.’

  ‘They’re tangas,’ Gillian said, defensively, proud of knowing the modern technical term for the cut-away pant. ‘They’re brief briefs.’

  Jeanie snorted. ‘No one wears these things any more, Gillian. There’s enough material here to launch a sailboat.’

  Jeanie picked up something that resembled an obscenely elongated garter and proffered it to Gillian. Gillian took hold of the scrap.r />
  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘G-string.’

  ‘My God, girls wear these in Dave Lee Roth videos.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jeanie asked, sucking in her cheeks, insouciant.

  ‘They aren’t practical,’ Gillian said.

  Jeanie’s eyes narrowed. ‘These are truly modern knickers,’ she said. ‘These are what everyone wears now. And I’ll tell you for why. No visible pantie line!’

  Gillian didn’t dare inform her that material was the whole point of a pantie. Wasn’t it?

  Oh hell, Gillian thought, shifting on Mr Kip’s Aston Martin’s leather seats, maybe I should’ve worn it in for a few days first. It felt like her G-string was making headway from between her buttocks up into her throat. She felt like a leg of lamb, trussed up with cheese wire. Now she knew how a horse felt when offered a new bit and bridle for the first time.

  ‘Wearing hairspray?’ Mr Kip asked, out of the blue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you are,’ he said, ever careful, ‘then don’t lean your head back on to the seat. It’s real leather and you may leave a stain.’

  Gillian bit her lip and stopped wriggling.

  ‘Hope it doesn’t rain,’ Mr Kip added, keeping his hand on the gearstick in a very male way, ‘the wipers aren’t quite one hundred per cent.’

  Oh, the G-string was a modern thing, but it looked so horrid! Gillian wanted to be a modern girl but when she espied her rear-end engulfing the slither of string like a piece of dental floss entering the gap between two great white molars, her heart sank down into her strappy sandals. It tormented her. Like the pain of an old bunion, it quite took off her social edge.

  When Mr Kip didn’t remark favourably on her new dress; when, in fact, he drew a comparison between Gillian and the cone-shaped upstanding white napkins on the fancily made-up Rotary tables, she almost didn’t try to smile. He drank claret. He smoked a cigar and tipped ash on her. He didn’t introduce her to any of his Rotary friends. Normally, Gillian might have grimaced on through. But tonight she was a modern girl in torment and this kind of behaviour quite simply would not do.