Five Miles From Outer Hope (5 page)
The Pomfret cake arches skywards, I gasp and topple, La Roux bellows victoriously, fully cognisant of having humiliated me
comprehensively
(I suspect this man might still have some outstanding issues remaining with his mother. I mean, who
was
this woman? A modern-day vixen with the conflicted soul of Lucretia Borgia?)
So,
lummie
, what’s a girl to do under such trying circumstances but to grab and twist and squeeze for all she’s worth? (I have hands with a grip like Goliath’s from kneading bread and extracting carrot, celery and beet juice
daily.
)
Ha
. Now the jack-boot’s on the other foot! La Roux’s fleeting but nonetheless
nasty
little grin of victory soon transmogrifies into a violent squawk of downright displeasure. And when he’s sufficiently displeased – which is
pretty bloody
displeased – I relinquish my grip and then run, hell-for-leather.
A childish impulse, I know. It’s kind of a brother/sister thing. He’s older and meaner, but – thank the Lord for tall mercies – I’m a damn sight bigger.
That said, what a complete and utter
bastard
, don’t you reckon?
I stumble across that good-for-nothing, pre-pubescent Patch, huddled snugly into a soft, grassy dip on our most westerly clifftop, all cross-legged and pink-cheeked and wind-thrashed, gazing down and out into the grey-blue grandeur of Bigbury Bay, clutching the book Mo sent tight to her chest and meditating deeply.
Get
this
: way before I even get a
chance
to reprimand her sharply and fully and roundly for her sudden, shameless abandonment of snotty little Feely (I’ve dragged him along with me – he currently has his left hand stuck tight inside a plastic mug with a terrible, half-worn illustration of what looks like Mickey Mouse fellating Pluto on the front of it), she expansively casts out her chubby arm, points to the green-humped horizon behind her: the distant white-daisy-headed settlements dotting the spine of this chalk-chiselled coastline, and asks in a voice
impossibly
breathless and chimerical, ‘Medve, do you think you might tell me…’ I mean, the girl’s literally
gasping
. It’s so ludicrously
Jackie
‘… the real difference between Inner and Outer Hope?’
‘Of
course
I can,’ I bridle, squinting with sour-eyed sisterly efficiency. ‘Outer Hope is apparently much bigger. It’s in bold print on the map, which I imagine must count for something. I’d guess it’s approximately five miles down the coast. A small town, possibly. Inner Hope isn’t in bold and it’s a short distance further. At best a village. At worst, a hamlet.’
(So
what
if I said I didn’t like geography? This is Medve The Older Sister at work: a role which never fails to bring out the apprentice girl Fascist in me.)
She shakes her head. ‘That’s not what I mean at
all
. It’s not a geographical question. It’s kind of…’ she pauses, ‘
metaphysical
.’
Not
geographical
? I squat down in front of her, enraged by this unexpected surge of youthful precocity. ‘You’re
twelve years old
!’ I bellow. ‘What need have
you
of metaphysicals? Get back indoors, you chubby, godforsaken little whore and play with your fucking
Barbie
like every other ill-adjusted puppy-fat-ridden girl your age.’
I toss Feely towards her. As he tumbles he taps himself on the head with his mug-covered paw and gives a slight bleat. His tongue is the colour of diarrhoea. Patch catches him deftly and plumps him onto her capacious knee. ‘I
knew
you wouldn’t get it,’ she murmurs, then inhales deeply and stares out towards the horizon. The girl’s so smug, so self-important, so
mumsy
.
I stand and turn.
‘
You gangly bitch
.’
I turn back again. ‘Did I hear you mutter something, or was it just the gulls spewing at the sickening bulge of your second stomach?’
Feely, who
of course
takes his translating responsibilities very seriously, serves, temporarily, as a most-minor adjudicator. ‘She said
You gangly bitch
,’ he repeats, his emphasis all up the creek, as if he’s speaking Hindi or Urdu or Pekinese. Then he pauses and shakes his cup-hand thoughtfully, ‘Whatever the heck
that
means.’
Ah. The
innocence
.
Patch, meanwhile – just check her
out
! – is rubbing the grass stains off her knees, whispering something wholly reprehensible into little Feely’s ear and smiling like Buddha. The
brat
.
In our house (okay, in our
hotel
, you anal blighter), we never ever eat a proper dinner. We graze. We wander hither and thither, like Thompson gazelles, or dik-dik, just plucking and nibbling. We pick and mix. It’s kind of a low-maintenance familial buffet.
Big’s totally
against
proper dinners. On his list of priorities, the debunking of the very
notion
of a proper dinner comes extremely high indeed – just below an aversion to bestiality (although if feelings are mutual, he certainly might waver) and casual infanticide. In Big’s mind, The Proper Dinner is like a slap in the face to your bowel. It’s a digestive Pearl Harbor.
So our evenings are all rice cakes (Big imports them in bulk from the US – where apparently they don’t turn a hair at the concept of food-as-polystyrene – they’re so well
up
on healthy living), green olives, hummous and sugar-free peanut butter. For pudding: dried apricots and prunes reconstituted in warm water. No sweetening. Evaporated milk, if you’re lucky. Fennel tea (
great
for the gut). Elderberry compress for the under-sevens.
Big loves Japanese fare, but only the stuff you can boil for five hours on the understanding that it’ll
promise blind
to hold its shape and remain tasteless, bright white and viscous. He’s into seaweed. Squid and wholemeal noodles. But only on feast days and weddings. Followed by ritual purging and emetic cleansing. Of course.
I know for a fact he thinks soy sauce is a Chinese conspiracy to keep communism unhealthy. And ketchup or HP? The
Devil’s linctus
. I mean did one man
ever
spend so much time considering the exact nature of the organic matter entering his intestine? Never mind the stuff he finally squeezes
out
of it.
But credit where credit’s due. Big was into faeces long – that’s literally ages – before it was really fashionable. (You’re saying you don’t remember all those articles in the style mags on feculence? The
I-D
defecation issue? You really
don’t
? Where the hell
were
you?)
As I remember, Big must’ve been the world’s only potty-training father who took more pride in
what
was passed (I’m talking size, shape, consistency) than in the actual
passing
. The apex of descriptive phrases in Big’s bowel-related-vocabulary is (wait for it)
pellet
. The pellet – small, odourless, hard, plentiful – is the very ultimate in Big-gratification. If you use the word
pellet
in casual conversation his irises tighten. It
delights
him.
Did we rebel? Of
course
we did. We rebelled plenty. Barge especially. I mean this boy was nine years old before he knew ‘cake’ was a sweet thing. He was
weaned
on the rice and the oat and the fish varieties. He thought a sponge was something you washed your face with. He thought chocolate was a shade of brown. He thought nougat was… What
is
nougat, precisely?
And the rest of us? The
gang
? Why the hell are you asking? We’re
children
. We get what we’re given and like it or lump it. Sometimes both.
Everyone
knows childhood is gastronomical slavery. No surprises there.
Ironically – I know this’ll kill you – that trusty Queen of Misery, M’lady Poodle, who by nature you might think would be a foodie revolutionary, is actually the most crushingly anal, hummous-spreading, sprout-eating, sugar-eschewing member of our culinary party. She is blessed with the taste-awareness of your average hard-core puritanical self-flagellator. She’s a nutritional whore. She’ll eat something wholemeal and then beg you for
more
.
So I’m still diligently painting Margaret’s blessed mug at half-past-nine in the ping-pong chamber – a small, grim box-room which clumsily straddles the stairway between the kitchens and the foyer – while every so often an individual family member will stroll past the door clutching handfuls of macadamia nuts, tiny, parboiled cocktail sausages (100 per cent soya and
absolutely
kosher), salted anchovies and nail-thin slices of badly peeled kiwi. All in all it’s a suitably high-flown and tempting gastronomical procession. But I’m not partaking. I’m
working
.
That said, I still find the time to listen in on Big informing La Roux about the ban on
Black Beauty
(so I
let slip
this little detail. It was purely accidental). He’s cornered him on the stairway and he’s telling him off in no uncertain terms, his voice cascading effortlessly down the sensuous curve of the walls – like the very best kind of public transport announcement – but sounding all tight-lipped and brisk and nasty.
Poor
blighter.
In truth, I’ve rarely known Big take against another human being with so much mean determination. Not since Roy Jenkins turned his back on the British Labour Movement (that was in March, and it’s
June
already).
The man’s a messed-up liberal with strong totalitarian tendencies, but he places a
very high premium
on natural loyalty. Which is why he loves pooches, come to think of it – loyalty’s supposedly their most essential characteristic (well, loyalty and
greed
. And halitosis. And don’t forget all that relentless
farting
– three things you’d have to be crazy to place any kind of premium upon).
I’m still cheerfully mulling over how badly La Roux will have taken this unexpected dose of bitter medicine when, out of the blue, at nine-forty-five precisely, he quietly enters my ping-pong kingdom (as I’m sure you can imagine, a
most
unwelcome intrusion) and does his utmost to attract my attention without actually resorting to simply
speaking
.
Still in that damned khaki boiler suit. He picks up a ping-pong bat, plays a mean air-game (he wins 21–2 – I mean, he
kills
that imaginary fucker) then lounges, slightly breathless, against the damp white wall, ditches the bat, sticks his thumbs through his belt-holes and sighs several times just a fraction too loudly. I peek up, grimace, and carry on painting.
‘Big really has it in for me,’ he finally grumbles, as if under some illusion that I’m in the slightest bit interested.
‘How tragic,’ I say, literally
dripping
with empathy.
‘You could’ve told me about the ban on
Black Beauty
,’ he mutters, ‘he just completely lost it. He cornered me on the stairway – and here’s the strange part – he didn’t even bother pushing home a strategic advantage by standing on the stair above. Quite the opposite. He stood on the one
below
, like some kind of deeply deranged pixie, and then just completely ripped into me.
‘It was frightening. I felt like I was trapped inside
Gulliver’s Travels
: the part where he wakes up and a group of tiny maniacs are disabling him with string. It was really quite…’ he pauses, ‘quite
unsettling
.’
‘The Lilliputians,’ I shrug wisely.
‘I mean, how messed-up can a four year old be?’
I glance towards him. ‘Feely’s just morbid. It’s a phase.’
La Roux sniffs plaintively a couple of times (he’s such a damn
lamb),
wanders off for a while, then returns dragging a fold-up chair behind him.
He opens it next to the table, sits down, grabs a mug and a brush, then watches my each and every move with all the unblinking concentration of a deeply transcendental iguana. I don’t crack under the pressure. I don’t shake, I don’t whimper.
‘Can I help you with this?’ he says, after a rather painful few minutes. ‘I think I’ve got the general hang of it. My hand-to-eye coordination’, he swanks, ‘is actually quite legendary.’
I pause and give him a steely glare.
‘Help me? Why?’
He sighs. ‘It’s just…’ He thinks for a while. ‘It’s just – how to explain it?… It’s just
politics.
I think I need to re-establish my power base. Within the family.’
Was ever a man so rank and duplicitous?
‘How?’ I gasp. ‘By slithering your way in
here
and ingratiating yourself with
me
?’
(Oh, come
on
. Don’t be taken in by my tone. Wise
up.
Tune
in.
It’s just basic girl-grandstanding.)
‘Yes,’ he smiles, reading me perfectly, his teeth overlapping like the yellowing slats in an old ivory-spined fan. ‘Yes,’ he repeats, ‘you’ve got it
exactly
.’
Then he stares at me for a moment (okay, so I’m finally smiling. I can’t
help
myself. The damn fucker’s
charmed
me) and then slowly and painstakingly he starts painting some pottery.
And I’ll tell you something for nothing: he’s not half-bad at it, either.
So there you have it: the strangely simple story of precisely how – in case you’re at
all
interested – that unashamedly high-gusseted, acne-ridden chancer known as La Roux finally wins me over with his brutal candour.
Happy
now?
No. Of
course
I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. Lighten
up
a little. Weren’t you
ever
sixteen?
Interest in the hotel – all things considered – has been pretty downright bloody phenomenal. I think it’s the part-island factor that really sets people a-tingle. We’ve had born-agains, nudists, the krishna-conscious, the military. We’ve had a
bona fide
Hollywood star (or just about: David Soul’s masseur’s mother), a school for children with learning difficulties, a famous astrologer, a football player. We’ve had them
all
. They’ve come, they’ve seen, they’ve felt the itch. But no one’s really Nails-Out Scratching. Not, that is, until now.
(So I’m hardly an economist, but it suddenly feels like 1980s Britain is sweetly faltering on the quiet cusp of soon-to-be full-throttle, hard-roaring, break-the-sound-barrier booming. She’s like an anxious, sherry-drenched virgin nervously considering the scary technicalities of her imminent deflowering. She’s staggering. She’s
teetering.
)
And sure enough (as if to vindicate my intellectual theorising), on the morning after the
impasse
before, a brand-spanking-new prospective buyer hitches a lift over to the island on the back of Black Jack’s antiquated, jaw-juddering Sea Tractor (ah, how
fleeting
my fancies).
This woman has an insolent look about her. A
haughtiness.
In fact, when she dismounts it’s with the ridiculously inappropriate demeanour of a small but feminized Vasco da Gama loftily laying claim to the Horn of Africa (kind of
fuck
the indigens
from the outset, if you know what I mean).
As far as I can tell, Ms Penny Smolly (for that is the appellation of this paragon) is a bad-arsed but well-heeled fruit cake. More money than sense (although astonishingly mean with it), and worse still, an unadulterated
cat
lover.
Believe it or not, she actually has it in mind to transform this blameless isle into a feline sanctuary (doesn’t she know cats
hate
water?) and although you wouldn’t know it just to look at her – she’s slight with grey eyes, an unusual strawberry-blonde moustache and a chin like a truncheon – this wench has a masters in snarling and whining.
Oh my dear
Lord
. She’s already brought the poor estate agent out in an allergy (all that fur on her collar and the cuffs of her cardigan) and as she strolls about the gaff unearthing
countless
imperfections he politely punctuates her on-going invective with his quiet but chesty and
exquisitely
timed sneezing.
Big’s nose (which frankly is the only really sizeable thing about him, apart from his ego, his temper and his libido) is also put out of joint royally when – on espying his current adventure in crochet: a wall-hanging of the USA with each state a different colour (that’s
fifty
states in total, so naturally
someone’s
gonna have to draw the short straw in relation to tincture. Texas is post-box red; Nevada, apple green; Philadelphia a sunflower yellow; Denver a bright south-sea blue; and from there on in things get a little hairy: Utah is the subtle shade of dirty bathwater; Virginia resembles a badger’s scrotum; Louisiana’s like a dead man’s liver… ) – she asks him whether he ever learned to
knit
(he never did), then she promptly takes issue with his painstaking re-arrangement of the main back shrubbery.
During the following two hours she goes on to scrutinize every single intimate nook and crevice of this huge Art Deco edifice, paying more attention to fine detail than a police chief inspector (I mean, down to the extent of noting how
nine
bulbs need replacing) and is suitably appalled when in one dark corner she accidentally happens across fat Patch biting loving chunks out of Feely’s dimpled, putty-coloured buttocks (purely for the hell of it. His arse is irresistible. It literally
demands
masticating).
Of course he’s protesting – and powerfully – writhing like a hungry pup, absolutely
hysterical,
the plastic mug jammed firm onto his fist again, his chin already pink-tinged with carpet burn. It’s like an obscene early tableau from
Caligula
.
Rather too soon after she finds me, large as life – if not
larger
– sitting cross-legged on the cocktail counter, painstakingly dissecting a troublesome verruca (I’ve learned over the years that if you soak your foot for long enough in slightly salted warm water and then pluck at the offending growth with tweezers, the whole organism can be extracted in one complete segment, like a perfectly-formed miniature cauliflower).
But the
real
surprise still lies quietly in wait for this punctilious Miss – like a low-slung, huge-jawed, gently growling
jaguar –
upstairs, at the very far end of the furthest top landing.
Ah, mais oui!
The lair of
La Roux
!
So they’ve inspected all the other suites (that’s fourteen in total) and this is the last. As a precaution the agent knocks cautiously on that (by now worryingly familiar) peeling aquamarine door, hears no audible answer, enters, inhales, blanches, staggers straight to the window and flings it wide open – the smell in there is already quite extraordinary, a burning, eye-watering odour of rank antiseptic – indicates the view (it’s a great one), the carpets and the original light fitments.
Catwoman snipes on about the heady aroma (she thinks something died somewhere), the hole in the ceiling, finds fault with the window-frames and bemoans the poor finish on the en-suite tiling.
Phew
. At last the inspection is finally over and they are literally
just about ready
to turn on their tails when Miss Fur-ball suddenly detects an untoward
squeaking
.
I think you know
whither.
She makes a hasty bee-line towards the stroll-in storage facility (hoping, no doubt, to add a minor infestation to her major demolition), yanks the door wide, and finds not a mouse in her house, as she’d fully anticipated, but a bad-skinned, balaclavaed, South African nest-builder spanking his pink plank in an orgy of wank, right there, large as life, just inside.
But that’s not the worst of it. La Roux (the
sauce
) is employing something rather unusual as his masturbatory inspiration – his stimulus, his
trigger
. It is a photograph (old, well-worn, black and white) of a mongrel: part-chow, part-pug, part-golden labrador (when you think about it, a really horrible genetic mixture; bug-eyed, blue-tongued but with a ridiculously obliging, indeed, perhaps even
accommodating
nature).
Doesn’t look good, does it? Especially to a cat lover.
La Roux can’t say much as Ms Smolly gasps, curses, turns and scampers, but he does say
something
(credit him at least with the genius of brevity). In fact he says two things: the first is, ‘This is not as bad as it seems. I actually
know
this animal.’ The second? ‘My father’s a gynaecologist.’
Virtually a life history, really, when all the silly woman actually wanted – or needed – was a rather more basic but nonetheless suitably
cringing
apology.
More fool she.
Oh
dear
. I duly deputize myself to mediate a peace between the two warring parties (that’s Big and The Masturbator – Ms Penny Smolly having hissy-fitted and high-tailed it almost immediately after).
To say Big is cross hardly does proper justice to his
colossal
rage. Don’t get me wrong. The man is not against masturbation
per se
. He simply thinks there’s a time and a place. And This Time and This Place just don’t happen to be it.
He’s probably right. To try and calm him
down
I back him
up
assiduously, I chip in gamely, I parrot, I chirrup, I echo. Mrs Mary Whitehouse herself would’ve been hard-pressed to find a spare ounce of moral laxity in me.
Of course I have
motives ulterior
.
We happen to be conducting this particular conversation ensconced downstairs in the ladies’ loo, accompanied by Feely, who is squirming on the tiling like a greased pig in a pie shop. The cold-water tap is gushing and we are struggling to hold his rapidly purpling paw beneath it. I am in charge of the mug-end, Big is in charge of his wrist, Feely is in charge of absolutely nothing, his foul temper included.
‘La Roux’s plainly demented,’ I tell Big, turning the tap on a little harder, ‘even muskrats have better instincts.’
Big stares at me suspiciously and then shakes his head. He’s small but he’s on the ball. He plainly smells something. My odious perfidy, probably.
‘So who
cares
’, I continue, ‘if his stupid father delivered Feely? What does it matter? That was four whole years ago. And look what a nightmarish liability
he
turned into.’
I give the mug a twist and a yank. Feely yowls. It loosens a fraction. I push it under the tap again. My stomach is soaking.
Big adjusts his position. ‘Why not give me a break’, he growls, ‘from your pathetic attempts at reverse psychology? You seem to forget that I’m the same old man who spends his time watching that ginger moron Denis Waterman displaying five times your level of clumsy fudge in
The
bloody
Sweeney.’
My head snaps back. ‘Waterman’s a blonde,’ I gurgle.
‘From where I’m standing’, Big continues, ‘it’s very clear that this devious South African has somehow managed – no
conspired
– to win you over. Heaven alone knows how or why, but he’s done it.’
Well I
never.
I’m so astonished by Big’s unexpected gust of insight that my grip momentarily relaxes. He notices. ‘Don’t let up,’ he grumbles, ‘keep trying. I think it’s finally coming.’
I still don’t react. He peers up at me, morosely.
‘Uh… that’s probably exactly what Penny Smolly was thinking,’ I splutter.
Big does not smile. He’s struggling to keep Feely’s wrist firm. Feely has helpfully removed all the weight from his feet and is now just poignantly dangling. I get into gear and twist again. As I do so I feel a very gradual easing. Then
pop
! It’s out.
Not his hand, unfortunately, but his shoulder bone, which slips from its socket with all the smooth ease of a bloated bee from a bluebell. Except not nearly so quietly. In fact the astonishing howl this four year old promptly delivers would strike envy into the hearts of a hundred-strong convention of Primal Screamers. He literally
bellows
.
Yikes!
We both drop him so fast it’s like he’s suddenly on fire, and the poor kid’s barely hit the floor (with a bang) before he’s up on his feet again and hopping around the
ladies
like a badly-injured baby ape, his entire right arm and shoulder hanging completely off-kilter. It’s
hideous
.
Big (always an ass in a crisis) flies into an immediate panic. The tide’s in. The tractor’s out. How the heck will we manage to get the doctor over? I’m still pathetically fumbling to turn that damn tap off like a sweaty-pawed, slack-jawed, cack-handed water lover (like father, like daughter). All is chaos.
Then suddenly something rather magnificent happens. As if from nowhere (okay, it seems likely the little pervert was hiding in a cubicle all the while, but I only actually realize this after), La Roux crashes into our crazy-palpitating, terror-struck environs, catches a firm hold of Feely, slams him down onto the floor, straightens his back, grabs his shoulder, gets him to count to three, applies a monumentally well-judged amount of force (but only very briefly) to the offending region, and then
click
, manages to shunt that pesky bone straight back into its socket again.
The whole affair takes approximately seven seconds. In fact the drama’s all over so quickly that Feely can’t help feeling a fraction disgruntled and yanks the plastic mug off his fist just to facilitate his socking La Roux a firm blow with it.
La Roux takes his thrashing like a man (upon his knee – he’s standing already), folds his arms anxiously across his puny chest (in the intimidating face of Big’s astonished gaze) and says – his tone almost apologetic – ‘I trained as a medic in the South African Army.’
Army?
‘Somebody, somewhere trusted this misfit with a
firearm
?’
(So I thought I was just
thinking
, but in the heat of the moment I find my mouth is moving and I am actually
speaking
.)
La Roux sticks out his chin. ‘I said I was a
medic
,’ he repeats. ‘My most essential weapons – aside from my trusty pill box and my hypodermic syringe – were my natural cunning, my fierce intelligence…’ he pauses, ‘… and my cast-iron stomach, obviously.’
Feely takes this rather appropriate opportunity to deal him a further well-aimed blow, then drops the mug, sits down squarely on the cold tiles and commences a brand-new (and very lengthy) phase of uninhibited howling.
Big, clucking like a mother hen, bends over to pick him up. I turn briefly to try and wring out my soaking skirt (wool’s so appallingly absorbent, don’t you find?), and when I finally chance to glance his way again, our diabolical hero – sweet and silent as a dark Red Admiral on a soft sea breeze – has bashfully flitted.
Hell’s bells. Events are certainly progressing at a fair old whack: especially
strategically
. I mean, one minute things are looking rather bleak for that cheerfully conniving South African buffoon, and then, in the very next instant, his fortunes have altered course completely.
It’s like a critical scene in a TV drama where the character you couldn’t help liking the best suddenly turns out to be the self-same bastard who viciously murdered his best friend’s budgerigar. Only back to front (which would have to make him the person you like
least
offering a timely portion of mouth-to-beak resuscitation).
Oh, liven
up
, you
know
what I mean.
Initially it’s rather difficult to gauge the subtle shifts and slides in La Roux’s general household popularity. Patch – having been anything from lacklustre to indifferent previous to the Feely disaster – now thinks the sun shines out of this medically trained impostor’s most intimate orifice.