Five Miles From Outer Hope (15 page)
He shrugs apologetically, as if he doesn’t want me to make too much of it. ‘I’m such a hoarder, I’d hoard my own arse if it wasn’t already attached to me.’
He leans away and inspects my profile. ‘You know, I’ve missed that chin,’ he says, ‘and I’m glad you’ve remained as implausibly tall as ever.’
Then he takes a deep breath and slaps his knees and makes as if he’s readying himself to leave again. ‘I’ve got someone waiting,’ he confides, ‘back at the surgery with one of the worst arthritic heels I’ve ever yet had the privilege of encountering.’ (The thought seems to excite him enormously.)
‘My train’s just coming, anyway,’ I tell him, pointing aimlessly towards the tunnel. ‘And I’ve got work to do.’
He raises an imperious ginger eyebrow. I show him the case notes. ‘I’m thinking of defending some guy who murdered a cockerel called Jason which lived in a kennel and crowed every morning at three a.m.’
La Roux scowls.
‘Oh fuck,’ I say. ‘You love hens. I forgot. Sorry.’
I put the papers away as he stands up and distractedly unfastens his white overall and reveals one of the most offensive tie-dye sweaters I’ve ever yet laid eyes upon (in all of my hideously multifarious hippie incarnations).
‘Well, Medve,’ he smiles ingratiatingly, ‘I certainly hope you’re well on your way to giving up that demon weed.’
He holds out his hand as if he wants to shake mine. I do the same. We shake. We let go again.
‘If you must know, I don’t actually smoke,’ I mutter.
‘That’s good then,’ he mutters back, ‘because I’m not really an acupuncturist.’ He shrugs. ‘I trained as a tailor.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Of course I am, stupid,’ and then he starts chuckling in that maddeningly flat, South African way I well remember from years ago. ‘My Lord,’ he sniggers, ‘I could always play you like a fiddle.’
In fact, he finds the whole thing so amusing he even slaps his bony thigh. I peek in his mouth as he’s laughing. He’s still got terrible teeth, I tell myself, just as bad as I remember. And he still stinks of tea tree. And his skin is still awful. And as if things weren’t bad enough already, he seems to have started wearing the worst kind of thick, yellow, plastic-soled, all-animal-product-free shoes with huge silver buckles.
I bet, I think to myself, he’s become a vegetarian, and that he makes the whole world suffer for it. And, you know, it kind of makes me like him even better. But I tell myself it doesn’t.
He leans against the wall and we’re both quiet for a while. I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what. Then I hear the train coming from deep down in the tunnel. I push my heels together and I pick up my bag, and I firm my resolve. It’s time I was going.
‘Still play a mean game of ping-pong?’ La Roux asks casually, over the increasing racket. But soon the roar is too loud for me to say
anything, and my stupid hair blows everywhere, and the brakes squeak, and the doors swish open. And everybody clambers off. And then everybody else clambers on again.
And still,
still
– for some utterly inexplicable reason – I’m sitting on the bench and he’s leaning against the wall. And the doors shut. And the train leaves. And the seconds slowly tick by in a glorious infinity as we both quietly wait and idly wonder what my final answer will be.
NICOLA BARKER
’s eight novels include
Darkmans
(short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden), and
Wide Open
(winner of the 2000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short stories, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in east London.
From the reviews of
Five Miles From Outer Hope
:
‘Makes you wince, gasp and laugh out loud’
MAGGIE O’FARRELL
,
Independent on Sunday
‘At times comic and whimsical, sometimes sad,
Five Miles From Outer Hope
is always fresh, original and tightly written’
The Times
‘This novel, which cleverly sidesteps the traps of earnestness and seriousness, could well be read as a sort of literary tonic for enervation and grumpiness, the latest welcome dispatch from Barker’s determinedly perverse and ungovernable imagination’
Guardian
Love Your Enemies
Reversed Forecast
Small Holdings
Heading Inland
Wide Open
Behindlings
Clear
Darkmans
Burley Cross Postbox Theft
Cover photographs © Wolfgang Kaehler/
Corbis (wood design); Louie Psihoyos/
Getty Images (bird).
Cover Design by Leo Nickolls
Copyright © Nicola Barker 2000
Nicola Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007462506
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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