Behindlings. Nicola Barker
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That was all. With her fine, low voice… her too-light eyes… her small hands… tiny hands. Fingers like pieces of stripped willow.
She frightened people. She frightened him, too, sometimes (he made no bold claims to be braver than the rest of them). Yet he loved every inch of her. Every hair, every dimple. The good parts, the bad parts. She was strong meat. She had vision.
Ever since she was a girl she’d had it. Her father a headmaster. Her mother a minister. Tricky combination. Methodists, to the core, imbued with that ancient, powerful, crazy-Dutch puritanism. Devout people. Hard-edged. But not her. Not Katherine.
Twelve thirty? So perhaps she’d returned early, without him seeing. Perhaps she’d secreted her sweet self and her bright red bike clean away while he was still in his kitchen. Home early. Perhaps she’d received prior word about Wesley? Advance warning.
But who would warn her? Nobody trusted her. Only him. Only Dewi. And she despised him for it. She didn’t want to be trusted. Didn’t need it. Had no use for it. She laughed at his loyalty. She teased him for it. She found it hilarious.
But that was just Katherine. That was her way.
Twelve thirty-three?
So who might she speak to, realistically? The newsagent? The butcher? The girl in the bakery? No. Never. Even shopkeepers kept their distance, exchanging only nods and grunts, refusing to allow any transaction –no matter how plain or small or innocent –to be incriminated by syllables. She terrified them. Men especially. And wives, obviously. And mothers. And children. Little children, even.
She preferred it that way.
Twelve thirty-five.
Oh God. Oh God should he go over there a second time? Could he chance it? Could he?
Dewi turned on his heels and marched towards the door. But no. What if… He froze. Three seconds passed. He doubled back on himself. He paused. He put his hands to his head. He gazed over at the telephone, helplessly.
Perhaps he should ring her. Would he ring? Could he? His right hand twitched. No.
No. He returned –shoulders slumping –to the window, to the reassuring white and shade of his hand-built shutters. He camouflaged himself again (the minutes still tip-toeing past him like a troop of well-marshalled fieldmice in feather slippers), the tension in his huge torso gradually subsiding into a slow-burning, acid-churning, belly-numbing resignation.
A big bull. A soft heifer. Dewi exhaled two great gusts of air –once, twice – through his dust encrusted nostrils, then dutifully, diligently, tenderly, fearfully, he continued his patient vigil for dear, sweet Katherine.
They all grabbed what they could. Jo got there first –so did marginally better than the rest of them –claiming Utah Blaine, Catlow and The Man from Broken Hills. Doc snaffled an early hardback edition of Hondo, which she suspected was one of L’Amour’s earliest. But Utah Blaine was his most successful, wasn’t it? His most famous novel?
Oh come on…
Who am I kidding?
She didn’t have the first idea about cowboy fiction.
Even so, she quickly squirrelled off her booty to a small table in the children’s section where she sat down on a tiny chair –somewhat conspicuously, her elbows pressing pale dimples into the lean flesh of her thighs –and carefully removed a bunch of crumpled sweet wrappers from her coat pocket (six in total), slowly sorted through them and finally located…
Okay. Clue 3
She partially re-read it. She struggled to assimilate it –
Uh…
– Look for love –
Fine. She’d got that already: love –L’Amour…
– Where liquid is solid –
Hmmn…
Somewhere cold? Somewhere icy?
– Where 62 fell,
– 46 still…
There were too many numbers – what the hell did they all mean – page references, maybe? She pushed the clue aside for a moment, pondered.
So… look for love somewhere icy. Or look for L’Amour somewhere cold. Somewhere chilly. Hang on… hang on. Utah –Salt Lake City. Not ice… not ice, but salt. Had to be.
Jo grabbed a hold of Utah Blaine and turned to the back cover where she inspected the synopsis, keenly. (Nah. This was just too easy. This was just… this was silly.)
Okay. Set in a town called Red Creek where some poor bastard called Joe Neal had been lynched by a nasty bunch of land-grabbers… then… Utah Blaine, a stranger, rolls into town objecting to the misuse of vigilante law… Bad guys, locals mainly, are led by some greedy, low-down, cowboy killer called Clell –
Clell?
– Clell Miller…
Blah, blah, blah
– Nothing particularly riveting. All standard, hard-knuckled Western fare, basically.
Jo frowned, turning the book over. Inside flap?
Nope. Paperback. So where would L’Amour’s biographical details be? First page? Preface?
She inspected the first page. Another brief plot summary… No biographical details to speak of… Only –
Uh…
– second page in, next to the copyright, some vague reference to how L’Amour first published under the pseudonym Jim Mayo –
Jim Mayo?
Jo casually perused the front preface again. Hmmn. Some pretty average writing interspersed by the occasional striking description of – say – an angry cowboy with a face ‘red as a piece of raw beef–
Yik
– making threats against Blaine…
Blah, blah…
– more stuff about Joe Neal’s ranch; the 46 Range…
The…?
Oh Fuck
She glanced up, guiltily. Did anyone…? Did…?
Bollocks. Hooch
– Hooch was staring at her.
Had he…?
Jo closed the book and rapidly turned to the next one. She picked it up, inspected it, thumbed through it, began reading, randomly, smiling to herself, goofily, as if she got some real thrill out of all this cowboy twaddle.
Glanced up again –
Bugger
– Hooch was coming over. He was clutching his own paperback which he’d already flipped through, twice, in a desultory manner. Jo rested her right elbow on the front cover of Utah Blaine. She began talking, even as he approached her.
‘I notice L’Amour initially published under the pseudonym Jim Mayo,’ she said (as if keen to exchange everything, like a real team player).
Hooch wasn’t taken in. He scowled as he pulled out a chair at the tiny table but then thought twice about sitting down on it.