Behindlings. Nicola Barker

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