Behindlings Read online

  ‘There was something in your background…’ he began slowly, carefully unfastening his blazer, ‘which I never knew before, and it was something which absolutely intrigued me.’

  ‘Really?’ Arthur was unimpressed but he was nervous, and nerves alone rendered him obliging. As he spoke, he noted –with a sudden feeling of inexplicable dismay –how his companion’s plump thumbnail was split down its centre. Sharply. Cleanly. Cracked open like a germinating seed.

  ‘I did a little nosing around. It appears you once had a famous relative who wrote a book about walking. Or farming…’

  ‘Both,’ Arthur sounded off-kilter, ‘a very ancient, very distant relative.’

  He tried to make it sound insignificant.

  ‘Well I found it fascinating. And you have his name?’

  ‘Yes. But that’s just a coincidence. My parents had no particular interest in either history or travel.’

  Arthur cleared his throat nervously, then tried his utmost to change the drift of their conversation by suddenly peering over his shoulder and into the undergrowth, as if to imply that something infinitely more engaging might be silently unfolding, right there, just behind them, partially hidden inside that deep and unwelcoming curtain of winter green. Perhaps a badger might be passing. Or a woodpecker –lesser-spotted –undulating gracefully through the boughs just above them.

  It didn’t work.

  ‘Your father…’ his companion paused, as if temporarily struggling to remember the details, ‘I believe he was a foreman with Fords at Dagenham?’

  Arthur nodded, mutely, closely scrutinizing his own middle and index fingers. He wished there was a cigarette snuggled gently between them. He would kiss it.

  ‘And your mother worked on the cold meats counter in the Co-op… But you did. You had an interest.’ Almost imperceptibly, his companion’s mellifluous voice had grown much flatter, and was now maintaining a casual but curiously intimidating monotone. ‘Which was why you attended agricultural college in the early seventies, before undertaking what, in retrospect, might’ve seemed a slightly ambitious attempt to retrace the exact footsteps of the original Arthur Young, but a whole… now what would it be, exactly…? A whole two hundred years later.’

  Arthur said nothing. What might he add? The forest shouldered in darkly around him. A short distance away he thought he could hear horses. His companion noticed something too. He glanced off to his left, sharply.

  ‘They’re on an adjacent track,’ Arthur murmured, cocking his head for a moment then walking to the edge of the path and sitting down on a wide, clean, newly-cut tree-stump. His companion remained standing, as before.

  ‘So I retraced,’ Arthur eventually volunteered, and not without some small hint of bile, ‘I re-visited, I re-appraised. I intended to publish a book, but things didn’t quite pan out. I found myself working for a London bank, and then, like you, in the confectionery industry. It wasn’t…’ he had the good grace to shrug apologetically, ‘a particularly sweet experience. I encountered some…’ he stumbled, ‘a portion of bad luck. I became unwell. Unfit. I received a pension. I still receive it. And you…’ he struggled to enlarge his focus, ‘you probably got promoted after I left?’

  ‘Yes. I had your old job in marketing for a while. Then I moved up a level.’

  Arthur nodded. He inspected his hands again. They were looking –he had to admit it –just a little shaky.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ his companion suddenly observed, his voice worryingly moss-lined and springy, ‘you got your breath back awfully quickly, for such an avowedly unfit man.’

  ‘What?’ Arthur’s sharp chin shot skywards a few seconds after he spoke, in a slightly farcical delayed reaction. His companion chuckled, ‘I’m not here about the pension, silly…’

  His fastidious tone made Arthur feel grubby. It was a nasty feeling, but extremely familiar.

  ‘Apparently,’ the glare of his companion’s hard smile continued unabated, ‘you sometimes like to walk distances of up to two hundred and fifty miles during an average seven day span. Although last week, for some reason, you only clocked eighty-nine.’

  Arthur was silent. In the weak morning light his sunken jowls glimmered like the writhing grey flanks of a well-hooked bream. The truth engulfed him.

  ‘Can you guess what it is that really gives you away?’

  Arthur didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was a neatly snapped twig. He sat, rigid, hardly breathing, blankly appraising his several scattered parts from some crazily random yet inconceivably distant vantage point. From a cloud. From a swift’s eye.

  ‘Your shoes. High quality walking boots. Well worn to the extent that any moderately inquisitive person might easily find themselves wondering why it could be that a man claiming long-term disability allowance should be wearing such fine, strong, functional footwear.’ ‘I was given them,’ Arthur whispered.

  ‘No,’ his companion interjected calmly, ‘you have a private deal with a large shoe manufacturer. I believe the formal term is sponsorship.’

  Arthur gazed down at his boots. He could smell his own guilt as patently as the shrill tang of disinfectant bleeding from the pine needles crushed under his soles.

  ‘Which was actually rather…’ his companion pondered for a moment, ‘rather audacious on your part, come to think of it.’

  Arthur considered this. He considered the word. Audacious. He paused. Audacious. Yes. He drew a deep breath. His back straightened. His chin lifted again. He stopped pretending.

  ‘So,’ he said, his voice hardening, ‘does moving up a level –I believe those were your words –does moving up mean that you’re to be held wholly responsible for that boy drowning recently?’

  His companion stiffened; his beam faded. ‘He wasn’t a boy. He was twenty-eight bloody years old. Don’t you read the papers?’

  Arthur shrugged. He looked down, modestly, his insides warming. His companion walked to the opposite side of the path, leaned against a Scots Pine and then peered up tentatively into its branches, as if expecting to see a wild little monkey dangling among its boughs.

  Arthur strung his fingers together. His confidence burgeoned.

  ‘I did read the papers,’ he muttered eventually, but without any hint of brashness, ‘I read about the Treasure Hunt. I followed the clues.’

  ‘No,’ his companion interjected, unable to help himself. ‘No. Not a Treasure Hunt exactly…’

  ‘Oh God. But how… how imprecise of me,’ Arthur’s mean lips suddenly served up the thinnest of grins, ‘and how stupid. Of course not. You called it a Loiter, didn’t you? A Loiter,’ Arthur unstrung his fingers and then hung them, instead, slack and loose between his bony thighs, ‘because our good friend Wesley invents special words for things, doesn’t he? He thinks words make things special. He wants every action to be particular, to be… to be individual in some way. And you know what?’

  No time for a response; Arthur rushed on, regardless, ‘I honestly –I mean I honestly – believe that Wesley is actually self-obsessed and arrogant and vain… and vain…’ Arthur lunged after this word hungrily, and when his mouth finally caught up with it, his tongue literally wriggled with the physical pleasure it accorded him, ‘and vainglorious enough to seriously think that this curiously irritating custom of his –this silly habit, this novel facility –gives him some kind of special premium on originality. Not just that, either, but on… but on morality itself, even… You know? Some kind of God-given… some kind of…’

  Arthur’s fingers were now twitching so violently as he struggled, a second time –and failed, quite notably –to find the word he was searching for, that he actually looked as if he was playing scales on an invisible Steinway (right there, in the forest), or practising something impossibly fast and fiddly by Liszt or Stravinsky.

  And while he continued to grasp –helplessly –for this infernal word that evaded him so absolutely, his eyes –previously glazed and grey –seemed to moisten and widen (their p
upils dilating), his cheeks (previously sallow and sunken) grew ripe as sugared plums in an autumnal pudding (a crumble, a fool, something tart, something hot, something sticky), until he looked like a man who’d swallowed down a large lump of gristle much too quickly –without chewing properly.

  But Arthur was still breathing. He was not halted or suffocated or silenced by what was happening. He was still vital. He was still active and still functioning. If anything, he’d been galvanised. He’d been enlivened. He’d been pinched –slapped –spanked –thrashed by an intoxicatingly hard whack of righteous propriety. An exquisitely addictive, high-minded, bare-fisted, low-church-style sanctimony. His rage was not only pious, it was borderline biblical – it was Abraham’s wife Rachel, trapped, temporarily, in a violently impotent maternal frenzy.

  Arthur’s companion (still leaning against his tree), observed Arthur’s long, lean fingers racing, the deep colour in his cheeks –his lips –and a tiny quirk of satisfaction began to lift his brow a way. Yet before it was completely risen, before it could settle, unequivocally, Arthur’s fingers abruptly stopped their fluttering. They fell back between his knees again. He suddenly grew still, the colour draining from his face –at speed –as if somehow repenting the too sensual flush of its former flowering.

  ‘The sad truth of the matter…’ finally his voice re-emerged from the icy depths of his sudden stasis, ‘the sad truth is that Wesley’s been brainwashed by his own publicity. Brainwashed to the point that he actually, honestly believes in all that rubbish he’s been spooning out over the years. All the lies. All the humbug. All the ridiculous chic… chic… chicanery.’

  Arthur stumbled, quietly, on his final delivery. But even this stutter couldn’t trip him up. It couldn’t silence him. Not utterly.

  ‘The bald truth is that he’s watched too much bad TV,’ Arthur spoke almost regretfully, inhaling again, eventually, with some difficulty. ‘Yes. That, and he’s been lucky. He’s landed on his feet a few times when by rights he shouldn’t have. He’s milked his opportunities. And finally, to top it all off, he’s jumped –and so… so wholeheartedly, with such flagrant, such obvious, such embarrassing rapaciousness – onto this whole, madly convoluted, New Age environmental bandwagon. All that ludicrously pat Third Wave jumble. All that Alvin Toffler “Small is Beautiful” crap.’

  Arthur sniffed, somewhat haughtily, ‘I mean it’s all been very timely. No point denying it. And he’s certainly taken the opportunity to read up on a little bit of pretentious French philosophy. He’s sharpened his act. He’s honed it. And I’m sure…’ Arthur’s voice was growing louder, his hands were picking up tempo again, were playing again –The Death March now, real-time, then double-time, then just plain madly, ‘I’m certain he thinks he’s a thoroughly modern hero. Like something from Rousseau. Or Nietzsche. Or, better still, an anti-hero. In fact I’m positive he thinks he’s a genius. And there are plenty of fools out there more than happy to go along with his delusions. But not me. I’m not one of them. Because he isn’t a genius, and I’ll keep on saying it. He isn’t a genius. Far from it. He’s puerile. He’s a shithead and a fathead and a peacock. He’s… He’s…’

  Arthur stopped again, mid-flow, swallowed hard, twice, as if to keep something down, to push it back, ripped off his baseball cap (as if longing to keep his fingers distracted) and then continued talking, but glancing up now; connecting, engaging, projecting, speaking more carefully, more plainly, ‘A Loiter,’ he rotated his cap in his hand, pulling gently at the lining, as if testing its solidity. ‘It’s a movement –a violation, of sorts –but slow and calm and casual. It’s an invasion, isn’t it? Or an infringement? A trespass. It’s slippery. It’s untrustworthy. It’s stupid and it’s pointless. In actual fact it’s just like… it’s just like Wesley. It expresses him perfectly.’

  Arthur shook his head, slowly, as if in wonder, ‘A Loiter.’ He rolled the word around on his tongue, ‘It’s actually quite pathetic, when you really come to think about it. It’s unformed. It’s adolescent… And yet,’ he looked up, keenly, ‘didn’t the company end up adopting the phrase? Didn’t you adopt it, I mean personally?’

  Arthur’s companion grimaced, as if taken aback by his pointed ferocity, but then he shrugged, ‘We might’ve used it in the initial publicity, for a price, but –and let me emphasise this fact quite categorically –in this particular context it had nothing whatsoever to do with either mischief or risk. That was our proviso. And obviously there had to be a worthwhile prize at the end of it all, an incentive, a reward…’

  ‘So you called in Wesley,’ Arthur, in turn –even against his better judgement –seemed drawn into himself again, ‘a man infamous as a prankster, as a joker. An out-and-out wildcard. Someone with enough of a reputation for piss-taking to make your average level-headed businessman run a mile. Which –oh dear God –inevitably, from your corner, must’ve made the whole deal feel so shocking, so seductive, so exquisitely… well, transgressive.’

  ‘Yes. We called him in,’ his companion quickly interrupted Arthur’s unhelpful little river of adjectives, as if in the vain hope of somehow re-routeing it, ‘and initially –I’ll make no bones about it –to start off with, at least, it did all feel rather…’ he paused, nearly sneering, ‘rather audacious. Yes. So we called him in. And eventually –with a little prompting, obviously –he came.’

  Arthur didn’t have to try too hard to picture it. ‘At first…’ he placed his cap onto his knee and scratched at his prickly, wheat-coloured chin, ‘knowing Wesley –I mean his type – he was probably fairly reticent. You presumably had your work cut out in persuading him. But you obviously,’ he smiled tightly, ‘you patently rose to the challenge.’

  His companion simply shrugged his aquiescence.

  ‘And in so doing,’ Arthur continued, barely restraining his anger at the very notion, ‘I can only suppose that you told him…’ he held up his hands and counted off each of the virtues he subsequently listed, one by one, on his bony fingers, ‘how much you admired his boldness, his imagination, his integrity, his amazing knack for acquiring publicity. And of course he has his followers –a large and wonderfully gullible ready-made assembly…’

  ‘Of course. The Behindlings.’

  ‘And if I know Wesley…’ again, Arthur was forced to qualify himself, ‘I mean if I did know him, I imagine he would probably have demanded complete control. Absolute autonomy. Because only Wesley can hold the reins.’

  ‘So we hand them over,’ his companion continued, amiably, ‘we give him his autonomy. We let him work out a route, prepare clues…’

  ‘And it’s all terribly secretive.’

  ‘Terribly.’

  ‘But then two short weeks after you release the third clue…’ ‘Yes.’

  Suddenly his companion’s bold voice wavered, just a fraction, ‘Yes. The drowning.’ Silence. ‘Fantastic!’

  Arthur clapped his hands. They flew together so rapidly, so violently, that they knocked his cap clean off his knee. But he didn’t seem to have noticed. His eyes were moist. His cheeks were taut. For the first time during their lengthy meeting he seemed deeply and unreservedly happy.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ his companion muttered thickly, ‘that’s a somewhat insensitive choice of word, under the circumstances.’

  ‘I know,’ Arthur looked momentarily abashed, ‘forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive you?’ His companion smiled, cheerlessly, ‘Why? You hate him. And it’s a perfectly natural reaction.’

  Arthur started, looked slightly surprised, and then, seconds later, almost guileful, ‘Me? Why should I hate him? I’ve never even met Wesley.’

  His companion snorted. ‘There’s a history,’ he said, ‘why the hell else would I be standing here today?’

  Arthur said nothing. He was unhappy again. Deflated. Some things were unmentionable. Histories, especially. ‘So he hurt somebody I knew once,’ he offered, finally, ‘that’s all. It was only carelessness. And it was a long time ago.’
/>   ‘Of course. A very long time. And you probably might prefer to try and forget all about it…’ Arthur’s eyes flared. To forget? How could he? ‘But I’m afraid,’ his companion’s rich voice dropped, effortlessly, to almost a murmur, ‘that’s not quite what I’m anticipating.’

  ‘Why not?’ Arthur spoke normally, but the question reverberated on the quiet, tree-lined path with an almost unnatural clarity, sending up a blackbird from a low branch behind him. The bird chattered its fury.

  ‘Why not?’ His companion’s eyes followed the angry bird. ‘Because lately I’ve become the unwilling recipient of a certain amount of…’ he paused, ‘pressure. From colleagues who aren’t at all happy about how things have been panning out –with Wesley –with the Loiter. Perhaps they feel, in retrospect, that Wesley was a rather poor bet. These are people –as I’m sure you can imagine –who don’t at all value adverse publicity.’

  Arthur grimaced. He did not need to imagine. He knew these people. Their complacency. Their serenity. Their ease. He loathed them.

  ‘So I’ve come under a certain amount of pressure…’ as his companion spoke he left the shelter of his tree, drew slightly closer to Arthur, then closer still, ‘and naturally, after a while, it seemed expedient to diffuse this pressure by contacting a man who had a history with the company, a man who might reasonably be said to have had a history with Wesley, a man with a grudge, an unfit man. I resolved to contact this man in order to quietly suggest that he might conveniently decide to renew his interest.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’ Arthur’s voice sounded flimsy. This was not a good question. Even he could sense it.

  ‘If he doesn’t? Well, then I suppose I might be tempted to make certain discrepancies, certain inconsistencies in his very private life a matter of more public concern.’

  Arthur was scowling. But he said nothing.

  ‘Okay…’ his companion suddenly crouched down before him, his knees groaning and creaking like a brand new, high-polished leather saddle, ‘you don’t need to know everything, but what you do need to know is that Wesley was entrusted with something very valuable. For obvious reasons I cannot tell you what that thing was. And yes, while he did relate certain strategic points on the Loiter to a small group of us, and provided us with some basic outlines of his general intentions, he by no means told us everything.