Five Miles From Outer Hope (12 page)
Nobody ever pretended Operation Vagina (that’s currently what I’m calling it) would be an
easy
action. And Lord knows it isn’t. But surely – I tell a slightly bemused Feely as he helps me with some crucial military drawings – even
fools
appreciate that trapping a wild and wily animal while it’s still alive and
kicking
always takes infinitely greater time and patience than going out with a firearm and simply shooting it to pieces (Even if, as in La Roux’s case, the use of random fire-power might prove – pound for pound – significantly more
gratifying,
I’m afraid guns aren’t really a serious option. Why? Because I’m
sixteen years young
, God-dammit, and unable to get a fucking
licence
).
I don’t know
who
I’m trying to convince exactly, him or me. ‘Whatever you say, Medve,’ Feely belches indulgently. ‘I agree completely…’, then he grabs a red crayon and applies it with focused gusto to my pen-and-ink efforts (Yes, the child’s an absolute
buttress
and still burping, bless him).
If, by any chance, you happen to be interested in my canny Operation’s essential timing, well, all in all, and everything considered, the full and frenzied
climax
to my major manipulative masterwork takes one dark night and two long days to come into its mature and mellow fruition.
The initial pace is deceptively slow and leisurely, but this does nothing to diminish the unhealthy
satisfaction
gleaned from each and every well-timed step in my foul and wicked perambulation. The loose scenario runs as follows:
1.
The Whitewash
(I believe we’ve been here already.) With a feisty mixture of guano and lies, Sister Patch gets La Roux and the others to think I’m deeply ignorant and guilt-ridden.
2.
The Baiting
(Ditto) I masterfully – if I say so myself – convince La Roux that I’m willing to sacrifice my girlie privacy to improve his mental, emotional and sexual well-being.
3.
The Drawing
Oooh
. Now that’s more like it…
The self-same evening of the fishing trip, I welcome La Roux into the ping-pong room and show him a series of badly penned sketches (This is 1981, remember, and pre-Milan Kundera’s shameless sexual shenanigans with mirrors, so every-thing’s looking pretty damn perfunctory down there, even to begin with, and – to make matters worse – I never really paid much attention during school biology lessons, on the brief occasions I ever
had
them).
La Roux pulls out a chair and sits down next to me. I notice idly that he has greased back his hair and is wearing his favourite pony jumper. Ah. How
touching
.
I have borrowed one of Barge’s old artist’s sketch pads for my amateurish doodlings.
‘Okay, La Roux,’ I say calmly, placing the sketch pad before him. ‘I’m going to show you some intimate pictures, and if at any point you sense yourself becoming agitated or unhappy, or if you feel your finger-pads tingling, just tell me about it and I’ll stop what I’m doing and we can play a game of ping-pong or darts or arm wrestle or something, to try and keep the mood as unthreatening and tranquil as possible.’
La Roux takes a deep breath and grabs a hold of my hand. He squeezes it gently. ‘Right,’ he says, nodding twice. ‘I think I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be.’
(Obviously it’s difficult for me to turn the pages or to point at my diagrams effectively now that La Roux has taken my spare paw prisoner. But so be it.)
Page one. The Female Torso, in all its glorious totality (I have traced around the outline of one of Patch’s old Sindy dolls for this full-body illustration, but I’ve given the lady in question a pair of nipples, a friendly smile and a well-defined pubic area).
La Roux stares at the drawing with an air of great satisfaction (nothing to worry about here, presumably).
‘So,’ I smile brightly, ‘I think this is all fairly self-explanatory… Uh…’ I do some pointing. ‘Head, thorax, abdomen. Just the same, I think you’ll find, as with insects and horses. But slightly different from fishes. Right…’
I’m about to turn over when La Roux says, ‘Here’s a question for you…’
‘What?’ I ask anxiously.
‘I’ve long wondered’, he ruminates, ‘whether women pee through their vaginas. It’s just that’s one of the things I’ve always found slightly off-putting about them, sexually.’
He casually twitches his fingers as he stares at me. I take a deep breath, clamp my jaw together and then shake my head.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I grind (that terrible mixture of enraged and giggly). ‘Of
course
women don’t pee through their sexual organs. That would be
disgusting
. They urinate through an extra hole just below their bottoms. I’ll show you exactly where, later, in the more detailed illustration, if you’ll bear with me.’
I turn over.
Page Two. The Genital Region.
La Roux clenches my hand a little tighter.
‘I feel nauseous,’ he confides, blinking repeatedly.
Fine
. We play two games of ping-pong and I cheerfully wipe the floor with him (21–6, 21–4). Then we sit down again. Slightly out of breath and perspiring gently.
La Roux slowly sets about inspecting the illustration properly. He starts at the top end and then works his way downwards, frowning. ‘Two things,’ he mutters, after a while.
‘Fire away.’
‘First off, for a woman who paints china for a living you seem to have no real,
discernible
artistic ability. This female genital looks like an angry moose, yawning. Secondly, there’s far more activity here than I ever remember learning about in biology. There are so many cavities it’s like a shower-head…’ he points. ‘I mean, what’s
that
, to start off with?’
I look closer. ‘That’s…’ I turn the drawing up the other way. ‘I think that’s a nipple. No. No. It’s a belly button,
stupid
.’
La Roux stares harder. ‘And below it?’
‘Clitoris. The girl penis.’
His eyes widen. ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Nope.’
‘The
girl penis
,’ La Roux repeats, softly, committing it to memory.
He stares some more. ‘And there?’
‘Oh… no…’ I chuckle, ‘that’s something Feely put in when I wasn’t looking. I think it’s supposed to be a revolutionary standard. Like a flag. Simply try and ignore it.’
La Roux’s brow wrinkles. ‘It’s just the particular
colour
he’s chosen is giving me a bad feeling… You know… Red.
Infection
.’
I quickly put my hand over it.
‘Just think a little harder about the cervix instead,’ I tell him brightly (incidentally, not featured in this diagram – internal bits and pieces are better illustrated on page three).
La Roux points again. ‘The moose’s jowls,’ he mutters, ‘is
that
the thing you just mentioned?’
I snigger. ‘Nope. Labia. A fleshy area.’
‘And
this
? Urgh!’
He inhales sharply and his face almost quivers with horror.
‘Oh dear,’ I ho-hum, ‘it’s just some low-fat fruit yoghurt. A piece of peach I must’ve accidentally spat out while I was drawing. Sorry.’
I pull the offending item off with my nail, and then blow it away. ‘There. Gone.’
La Roux pushes his chair back. ‘I think,’ he mutters, ‘I’ve seen enough to be going on with. Perhaps you should put them away again. For the time being, anyway…’
‘But I haven’t even shown you the special urinary
duct
yet,’ I protest indignantly.
La Roux stands. ‘Come
on
,’ he taunts, grabbing a bat and waving it. ‘I suddenly feel like the time has come for The Great La Roux to thrash you
senseless
at ping-pong.’
I put away the pictures, without any further objections. Then I grab my bat, we play the game and I beat him, three times over in quick succession. 21–1, 21–4, 21–3. Which in my book is pretty bloody categorically.
4.
My Disgusting Crochet Knickers
(Now we’re
really
getting somewhere.)
It’s a good while later (after eight, approximately) and following an extended bout of early evening snacking. (The menu? Rice cakes, walnuts in vinegar, dried pears and tinned figs in their natural juices.) Big trots casually outside on to the balcony to savour the large, pink sun a-setting over the sea with that bastard brown-nose La Roux close in tow. More crochet fun is plainly in the offing.
After doing a couple of circuits (for some inexplicable reason, La Roux has a tiny, white, clay pipe with him – the kind they unearth in tedious archaeological excavations – and while he walks he chews on it like a vacuous South African amalgam of Sherlock Holmes and Popeye), they sit down together, either side of a wicker table, with three rolls of wool, a book Big’s reading about the Hay Diet, and a flickering oil lamp burning between them.
Big is completing Nebraska (pale mauve) while La Roux is receiving cursory instructions on how to make a clumsy, circular doily. It’s all horribly intense and muscular and arts and craftsy, as I’m sure you can imagine.
I’m serving tea, as it happens. Rosehip. I bring it out on a tray. I shove the balls of wool aside, to make room for it (they both cluck like old women, in tandem, then continue what they’re doing,
without
even thanking me).
I turn to go. I walk five steps away, then pause, and spin, and face them again. Although Big – from where I’m now carefully stationed – has his back to me, La Roux, on the other hand, has a perfect view of my fine girl-giant figure over his compadre’s tiny needle-working shoulder.
I place my knees together, lift my skirt, adjust my knickers, and wait patiently for La Roux’s attention. A full four minutes pass (it seems that initially he’s much too deeply embroiled in the wonders of crochet to notice my silent attendance), then Big reaches out his hand for a sip of his tea.
He takes a mouthful, pulls a face, puts his cup down, tips in a little honey, stirs, offers a kindly word of wisdom to La Roux. (‘I think if you hold the needle less tightly the stitches will loosen up accordingly. It’s all just a question of
flow
, I find, with crochet.’
Jeepers
. And people think Chairman
Mao
was fussy?)
La Roux glances up at him, nods, looks down again. Chews on his pipe some. Freezes. His hands become slightly clumsy. He takes a deep breath, and then, finally, shoulders up and blinking, he peeks my way again.
My way? I’ve
gone
. I’ve vamoosed. I’ve scarpered. Fast as a rat, I’ve scuttled inside and have hidden, sniggering, behind the curtains.
La Roux scowls, disconcertedly. Did he really just imagine a scary six-foot girl giant, her teeth full of fig pips, grinning savagely in the dark and scary shadows of the oil-lamp’s flickering? Did he? The very
devil
in a voluminous pair of badly soiled, baggy, crochet knickers. Standing, larger than life, only five short steps behind her temperamental, tea-sipping father (a short-fused bugger at the best of times)? Did he?
Big glances up again and notices La Roux’s eyes wandering around anxiously in the shadows behind him. ‘La Roux, what are you
thinking
?’ he suddenly stutters. ‘You’ve dropped a stitch there, can’t you see?’ He gets up, shows him how to rectify the problem, returns to his chair and sits down again. ‘And don’t forget to drink up your tea,’ he reminds him, several minutes later, in a most sweet and cordial and gentlemanly manner.
5.
La Roux gets The Collywobbles
You know how it is with a military operation. It can’t run too smoothly. There have to be undercurrents, back-washes and eddies. To keep things uneasy.
Before bed La Roux corners me in the kitchen and whispers, ‘I think I’ve suddenly lost interest in this whole genital situation.’
I gasp and look suitably devastated. ‘La Roux.
No
. You’ve
got
to be kidding. I mean, after all the
effort
I’ve put into it?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s just too damn risky.’
I frown. ‘Sorry?
Risky?
What do you mean?’
He grimaces. ‘You
know
. The little dumb-scene, earlier, behind Big, at tea.’
I continue frowning. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
He sighs impatiently. ‘The figgy teeth. The huge crochet panties.’
‘
Panties?
’ I echo. ‘
Huge?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Figgy teeth?
I never eat figs. Ask anybody. Ask Patch.’
Patch trundles conveniently into view at exactly this moment, Feely in tow.
‘Patch,’ La Roux enquires, just as I’ve suggested, ‘does Medve here eat figs ever?’
Patch looks at La Roux as if she thinks he’s crazy. ‘Figs?
Never
. They give her eczema. She’s horribly, horribly,
horribly
allergic.’
I give her a warning glance (talk about a fat and shifty Sarah Bernhardt in the making), then yank La Roux into the laundry room, slam the door behind him, and lift up my skirt most
gingerly
, modestly showing him only the most
inoffensive
corner of my freshly changed undergarments.
Cheesecloth. Petite. With birds and roses. The kind of things you could blow your nose on and then throw away. Flimsy as a weak alibi.
‘Oh,’ La Roux frowns, then looks a little closer, ‘that’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there, on your thigh…’
‘Well, next time you happen to feel like taking a peek at it,’ I tell him, haughtily dropping my hem and flouncing doorwards, ‘you’d better ask me
very
nicely, you rude and ungrateful South African
sissy
.’
As I march resolutely through the kitchen – chin up, hips twitching – fat Patch, still lounging against the work surfaces, stands straight, salutes, and then winks at me lewdly, like a too-eager busboy after a big tip.
‘It’s always in that brief and blissful moment when you feel you’re at your most unassailable that you actually have the worst to fear
…’
I was taught this motto in Malay Brownies, and it so often proved invaluable to me throughout the seventies – all those tricky pyjama parties and risky pre-teen-girl-tiffs: ‘You’re my best friend!’, ‘No I’m not! She is! And you’re ugly!’ – that you’d honestly think, at this apposite juncture, it would be absolutely
foremost
in my mental processes.
But it isn’t (Perhaps I’ve got above myself, temporarily. Truth to tell, I’m seriously considering borrowing the life story of Che Guevara from the local library to give me a taste of something really
meaty
in terms of conflict philosophy. You
know
, to try and get familiar with some of the more
filthy
aspects of war-making, the likes of which Baden Powell never
dreamed
of even in his most frenzied, strong-brown-booted pseudo-authoritarian fantasies).
Don’t call me overconfident. Just call me
silly
.
Two a.m. One moment I am deep asleep (dreaming about a true-life incident in which Jack Henry is found guilty by a Kansas-based Grand Jury, and sentenced to ten bonus years in prison for carrying a dangerous weapon concealed about his battered person. A Bic biro, but without its inky middle.
Jack Henry is
incandescent
with rage. He can’t honestly believe they’d send him down for this trifle. A Bic pen? Are you
kidding
?
But although I keep asking him
why
he was carrying the pen and what exact
purpose
it was serving – it’s a long night and I have nothing better to do with myself – he just keeps cursing at me and saying it’s
irrelevant
or that I’m
bothering
him unnecessarily. He wants some
peace
. Can’t I
see
that? Am I
stupid
or something?
‘But this is
my
head, you rascal,’ I bleat at him. ‘
So?!
’ he yells back at me. ‘You think I actually
want
to be in this hell-hole? Do you imagine I
like
being trapped inside the teenage skull of a girl who’s never even bothered reading Marx or Jung or Sartre or Dostoevsky…?’) Then –
bam!
– the very next instant I am wide awake and giggling. Yes. I said
giggling.
Uncontrollably.
Because I am receiving a relentless tickling at the hands of a Master Tickler. Guess who? No. On second thoughts, don’t bother. It
can
be none other than the Pesky South African.
I don’t know if the actual tickling is entirely intentional (I’ve just woken up, how sodding
rational
do you expect me to be?), but he’s applying something soft as thistle-down to the base of my spine; that tantalizing junction where my baby-doll nightie is
just
supposed to cover its matching puffball panties (I get two baby-dolls every year from my Great Aunt Sonya who thinks because I’m so huge she’s literally
obliged
to buy me everything in miniature).
I slap at the place at least five times before I realize it’s not in fact a deeply misguided leaden-arsed mosquito or a mischievously fluffy-footed fairy tap-dancing cheerily at the top end of my buttocks. It’s something altogether different. It’s a peacock feather.
I sit up and blink. La Roux stands before me (in his regulation army pyjamas), waving the feather around like an air-traffic controller. I rub my eyes. ‘Are you sleep-walking again?’ I whisper querulously.
‘
What?
’
(Plainly
not
by the strength of his reaction.) He sits down, cross-legged, on the end of my mattress and pulls a spare blanket around his bony shoulders.
‘So, what are you doing?’ he asks.
I blink, indignantly. ‘What am I
doing
? I was fucking
sleeping
.’
‘Oh.’ He sighs, yawns, scratches his head a little and stares up at the colourful dome above him. ‘There’s a piece of glass, a green piece, directly above us. The wind’s really rattling it. Can you see it shifting?’
I look to where he’s pointing. ‘It’s always done that. It’s just part of the stained-glass deal. Lovely but noisy. Like an intelligent female.’
‘All the same, I think we should move over a little…’
Before I can muster the strength to oppose him, he’s thrown off his blanket, is clambering around on his hands and knees like an poisonous but insipid four-legged spider, and is shoving my mattress (with me still upon it – and that’s no mean achievement) several feet over towards the bar.
I’m too whacked to complain. I just glare at him silently as he clambers back on board and readjusts his blanket.
‘That’s much, much better,’ he mutters, and then yawns again.
‘What’s
wrong
with you, La Roux?’
He shrugs. ‘Can’t sleep. I was wondering whether you might like to read me a story. To calm my nerves down. To cheer me up.’
I rub my eyes. ‘What kind of story did you have in mind?’
‘Anything.’ He smiles. ‘And I bought you my special peacock feather. It’s a present. I got it from the back-end of a bad-tempered bird in Wolverhampton.’
He hands it over. I take it. It’s a fine one.
‘Wolverhampton? What on earth were you doing there?’
‘Nothing in particular. That’s just where I was staying before I came here.’
‘Oh.’ I sniff the feather. It smells of nothing. ‘Thank you. Although they’re bad luck. Did you know that?’
‘No.’ He yanks at the blanket and sniffs, mournfully. ‘The nights are the worst,’ he finally confides, after a pause.
‘In what respect?’
‘I miss my family. And other stuff… like…’ his voice softens, ‘like the way the farmers burn the veld in winter. The smell of charcoal and the sight of the dry grass flaming. The fire engines. And the noise the flocks of mousebirds make. A special whistle. Like a
tree-ree-ree
.’
I try and shush him, but he doesn’t listen. ‘And the stag beetles,’ he chuckles, ‘big as your fist, caught in potholes on the roads. The red earth. And the coastal drive to Cape Point. And the thieving apes who attack the tourists and steal their sandwiches. And the huge moths. And my best friend, Thiens.’
‘
Who?
’
‘Thiens. He’s a student at Witwatersrand University. Near Johannesburg. If you become a student you can avoid conscription. He’s doing foreign languages.’
‘So why didn’t you become a student then?’
He tuts at me. ‘Too
stupid
, stupid.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
He leans back on his elbows. ‘Oh, how I miss the purple jacaranda,’ he muses, ‘and the sunbirds. And the bee-eaters. Table Mountain. The big winds. The water shortages. The
braai vleis
,’ he smiles, ‘which I always really
hated
when I was there. And the flowers in the Karoo Desert. And the summer storms. And hail the size of golf balls. And the proteas in the Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens. And the boys selling newspapers on the roadways.’
‘The men,’ I correct him.
‘And these special bubblegums we have called Wicks’s. Turns your mouth pink. Tastes of antiseptic. And grape-flavoured Fanta. And Datsuns…’
‘I bet your mother misses you,’ I intervene softly (if I was his mother, I believe I would miss him).
He smiles. ‘She thinks I’m a coward. I’m a local embarrassment. Everybody knows about it. And the maid – my nanny – Dorothea. She thinks the same way. For once in their lives they’re in total agreement. They’re both
equally
ashamed of me.’
‘And are you a coward?’
‘Probably.’
He stares up at the ceiling. ‘The Peacock Lounge,’ he says, yawning, ‘that’s why I brought you the feather. And because you’ve made me feel at home here. And for showing me your panties. And for never having seen
Joseph.
Which is a tragedy.’
He’s quiet for a while and I think he must be sleeping. Then his voice breaks the silence. ‘Tell me the story of Shiro Chan,’ he whispers, turning over on to his belly. ‘I want to hear it again.’
‘I don’t know where the book is.’
‘Then make it up.’
I grumble a little (as may well be expected under the circumstances), then place down the feather and lie on my back, staring up at the blue-green-glass ceiling.
‘In the beautiful Japanese city of Nara,’ I whisper, softly, ‘there once lived around about a thousand wild red deer. In the spring, the bucks would proudly display their antlers while the gentle does would tend to their fawns. One year, however, a special doe was born with a wonderful crown of strange white fur on top of her head. They called her Shiro Chan, Queen of the Deer of Nara.
‘The beautiful Shiro Chan was always very popular with the tourists, who loved her, dearly. But after only a few short years of life she was tragically killed in a road traffic accident. It would seem that true beauty…’ I pause, momentarily.
‘It would seem,’ La Roux repeats dozily, ‘that true beauty…’
‘It would seem that true beauty is fated to a short life only. Even among the deer.’
‘Ah,’ he sighs peacefully. ‘The beautiful Shiro Chan. Queen of
all
the Bovines.’
In the morning, when I awaken, no sign of him remains. Only the peacock feather, an abandoned blanket near to the doorway, and a strangely all-pervasive smell of antiseptic on the bed linen.
I’m thinking of aborting the plan (The Malay Brownies were spot on, see?). It’s just the fun’s kind of gone out of it. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly. That’s just the way I’m feeling. My mind is virtually made up. Then something rather inexplicable happens. And I can’t make head or tail of it. But it changes things.
After breakfast (a genial occasion: Big’s been out early to pick mussels from the rocks and Patch boils them perfectly and serves them in the foyer, on a blanket, at the feet of Diana. Feely doesn’t remove the tricky, green, anal area on one of his and nearly vomits. All
very
stimulating), I’m diligently putting in some extra hours on my pottery when I hear a heated conversation going on way down below me. In the kitchens.
Patch and La Roux, arguing about I don’t know
what
, precisely. And Patch is going off at him like a firecracker.
Five minutes later, La Roux wanders past my doorway. I call him in. He looks different, somehow, from before.
‘I just heard you arguing with Patch. What happened?’
He shrugs. ‘Nothing.’
‘I don’t know if you realize this, but Patch doesn’t argue with
anybody
. She’s too placid. That’s simply her disposition.’
La Roux is staring over my shoulder and out of the window. ‘The weather’s fine,’ he says, ‘maybe we can go swimming later, with the fishes, like you said we should yesterday.’
I nod. He smiles. ‘Patch just…’ he pauses, as if something terrible is weighing on his mind. ‘She’s just going on about apartheid and all this complicated political stuff I don’t understand. She’s been reading about the Sharpeville Massacre and she got upset when I didn’t know much about it…’ he grimaces, ‘which I suppose is pretty embarrassing, really.’
He shrugs helplessly, then he leaves me.
Jesus!
What got into
him
all of a sudden?
When I see Patch just before lunch, her face is blotchy like she’s been crying all morning. She’s about as tetchy as a nesting reed warbler when there’s a cuckoo in the area. She won’t let me go
near
her. She’s cooking a Thai vegetable concoction with ginger and fresh coriander.
I pull out a chair. ‘I heard you arguing with La Roux earlier…’
I might as well have
slapped
her, her reaction is so violent. Her head jerks around. She nearly knocks the pan off the cooker. ‘And what did you hear?’
‘Nothing. Just voices. La Roux said you’d had an argument about the Sharpeville Massacre, which seemed – I don’t know – a fairly stupid thing to have an argument about, really.’
Her eyes flash. ‘Do you know how many innocent people were murdered at Sharpeville, Medve?’
I shake my head (Am I quite simply the worst person in the world, or am I actually
missing
something here?).
‘Sixty-
nine
,’ she hisses, ‘all unarmed. Peacefully protesting. Women and children.’
‘Right,’ I inspect my hands. When I look up again, a minute or so later, she seems to have brightened a little. She turns down the stove and walks over. ‘Is the plan still on for this afternoon?’ she asks.
I rub my cheek. ‘I don’t know. I was thinking maybe the fun had gone out of it.’
‘Oh come
on
,’ she whispers (slightly crazy around her edges), ‘don’t be
ridiculous
. It’s going to be fantastic.’
She pulls open a kitchen drawer and stealthily removes a brown paper bag from it. ‘I have the thing you wanted here. And I have my front-row seat reserved, upstairs, in the Chaplin Suite, which has a perfect view of the cove.’
She yanks out a chair and sits down on it. ‘And I’ve had some ideas,’ she says, ‘on the very best way to go about it…’
Then she cheerfully proceeds to blow on my embers. She huffs and she puffs. She has such a way about her, my little sister, that in five minutes flat, she’s completely inflamed me.
Everything else is only
filling
, so I’ll cut to the chase. Six p.m. The sun is low. The weather is as good as it needs to be. The coast is clear (Big has taken Feely off on some private mission somewhere. They’ve been gone for several hours). I get my swimming togs together – my towel, my flip-flops – throw on a bikini. I tie up my hair.
On my way down to the cove I bump into Black Jack with a bee in his bonnet (La Roux’s trailing ten steps behind me – in shorts and his balaclava, an eye-boggling combination – and still seems a little mournful after this morning’s excitations).
‘I was just thinking,’ Jack says, ‘how it might be fun if we went to see the parliament together. Tomorrow, maybe. The three of us. Or we could invite the others if you think they’d be interested. It’s not supposed to be
especially
good this time of year, but it should still be worth seeing…’