Five Miles From Outer Hope (6 page)
Big has been briefly – if not entirely convincingly – won over. Feely – now here’s the weird part – having liked La Roux from the outset, suddenly can’t bear to catch the slightest
whiff
of him. And me? I liked the fool before, and now I love him ever more dearly.
These feelings are – if anything – intensified by a small and ridiculous incident which occurs later that self-same evening. Having espied La Roux’s miniature guitar in his nest the day before, I suggest (with the secret aim of mollifying Feely a little) that we all get together that night, once my lengthy stint of painting is over, for a spot of musical revelry.
The whole family just
loves
to warble. Unfortunately we possess not a single harmonious bone between us. We have voices like chainsaws. In gloriously cacophonous union we’re sufficiently discordant to unhinge a raven (except, that is, for Barge, who sang like a nightingale prior to becoming tragically tone-deaf aged nine after firing off a cap gun inside his ear to forestall a riotous stint in some degraded, robe-wearing atoll-based version of the Vienna Boy’s Choir. The clever nipper).
At half past eight we all assemble in the Palm Court – a glorified greenhouse which adjoins my sleeping quarters. Big thinks the large glass surround will make the acoustics spectacular. La Roux duly arrives (a little later than the rest of us, swathed in a dusty red velvet curtain garnered from one of the upstairs toilets, resembling a half-cocked thrift-shop Roman emperor), his small guitar ensconced snugly under his plush-draped arm.
As chief musician, he immediately takes possession of the best (if also the most arse-clenchingly uncomfortable – the man’s all
show
) high-backed bamboo chair available. The rest of us cluster around him, balanced precariously on ill-maintained, mouldy-cushioned garden furniture.
Feely naturally has his bean-bag with him, but refuses to sit upon it. Instead he crouches suspiciously on the parquet and clutches it to his chest as if living in a constant state of dread that La Roux will suddenly and arbitrarily snatch it from him, hurl it to the floor and conduct some agonizing experiment upon it.
La Roux makes a meal out of tuning up his instrument (a skinny bare knee and a tantalizing flash of thigh just visible from beneath his crude acres of velvet) while the rest of us debate which songs we’ll be singing.
Big – for reasons which will probably always remain a mystery to any person of taste or intelligence – is rather keen to wrap his tonsils around Cliff Richard’s ‘Living Doll’, Patch has set her heart on Kate Bush’s ‘Babooshka’, Feely demands Chas and Dave’s ‘Rabbit’. I suggest ‘The Art of Parties’ by Japan just to show how highbrow I am. But no one – least of all the guitar-player – seems to appreciate how clever I’m being.
In the end a compromise is reached when Patch suggests this year’s Eurovision smash: Bucks Fizz’s ‘Making Your Mind Up’ (sweet Jesus, how
unifying
), and even though I hold out against it with ugly oodles of teen-determination, the majority still somehow maintains its sway (Yeah, so
fuck
Euro-democracy).
La Roux, on being asked whether he’d be all right to strum this tune, modestly acknowledges that he can play ‘by ear only’. We are all suitably impressed – to the extent that Big asks him, just once, to adjust his curtains after they gape even further to reveal a slightly off-putting pair of capacious white y-fronts, and even then in a voice you might almost call
indulgent
.
We illustrate our sing-a-long expertise by clapping out an approximate beat to start off with (two minutes are wasted deciding the appropriate tempo) then I duly deputize myself to count us all in.
One, two, three, FOUR
. And we’re off.
Patch is immediately on her feet doing the requisite Euro-band hand movements. Feely – still clutching his bean-bag like it’s his dancing partner – is performing a marvellously seductive baby wiggle. Big is all smiles. It’s a
party
.
But it doesn’t last. Barely a single verse is completed before everything descends inexorably into chaos. La Roux is banging out an unbearably noxious racket on his guitar (which while small in stature is still large on volume). He would appear to possess no musical talent
whatsoever
.
Big is the first to really discern it (the man actively
relishes
disappointment). ‘I thought’, he says stiffly, ‘you said you could play that thing.’
La Roux stops his horrible strumming. He thinks hard for a while, then he shakes his head, slowly. ‘Uh…’ he pauses, as if deeply confused by our plain irritation. ‘Uh, no,’ he smiles, ‘I don’t think I ever said I could
play
.’
‘Not
anything
?’ Patch asks.
‘So why’, Big interrupts, ‘do you own a guitar?’
La Roux looks down at the offending object? ‘This old thing?’
We all nod in unison. He shrugs. ‘I stole it off a child on the train.’ He frowns. ‘A very
bad
child.’
Big abruptly clambers to his feet and marches outside onto the wide sweep of the hotel’s grand balcony. Patch scratches her head. ‘Wow,’ she mumbles (and it’s almost in
awe
), ‘what a complete and utter
embarrassment
you are.’
Feely is staring at the guitar with worried eyes as he stands behind a bamboo, glass-topped table, making a meal out of the contents of his nasal passages. He plainly has La Roux down as a certifiable child-hater.
La Roux adjusts his robe. ‘You know something?’ he whispers confidentially. ‘I find your family unusually uptight for a bunch of hippies.’
I say nothing (What’s
to
say?).
‘And the worst part is,’ he continues, ‘I could’ve learned the guitar as a boy, but I missed my opportunity. I actually went and took swimming lessons instead.’
‘Really?’ I ask gamely. ‘And are you an impressive swimmer?’
He blinks. ‘Swimmer?
Me?!
’ He chuckles. ‘No. I could never get my head around the basic knack of…’ he thinks for a while, ‘… the knack of
floating
.’
For a few, brief seconds he silently mulls over this poignant irony, then he smiles, stands up, passes me the guitar, yawns, gathers his red robe grandly around him and glides off with all the mile-high airs and inappropriate graces of an unkempt, over-indulged
Folies Bergère
.
Would you believe it? The cheeky
freak.
It’s mid-morning, low-tide, and I’m taking La Roux on a tour of this tiny island’s most tantalizing rock pools. La Roux has recently divulged an unusual interest in crustaceans.
‘I find that the happy sight of a little crab or a shrimp or a lobster’, he pontificates cheerily, ‘will always set me up nicely.’
Set him up for
what
exactly, he doesn’t deign to specify.
And he still persists in wearing his balaclava, even though the air is intoxicatingly soft and camomile-scented and balmy. That said, his sharp eyes peer out from behind their black woollen prison as bright and keen as a Siamese fighting rat’s, and his two feet on the slippy rocks have such a confidently sure-hoofed and nimble character that to all intents and purposes they seem virtually cloven. In general, his demeanour is one of infuriatingly uninhibited perkiness.
He is strangely attired in a thin, well-worn, pale-blue summer sweater with a ill-preserved embroidered illustration of an Appaloosan pony on the front of it, and some light, canvas-coloured baggy trousers, so low on the hips and wide on the thigh that it’s as if he has a small section of a trellis stuck up inside of them. They may well be African in origin, or perhaps even Indian.
Naturally his unorthodox garb means he receives a couple of slightly perturbed sideways glances from the occasional sharp-eyed but nonetheless deeply inconsequential tourist – and if they’re staring at
me
, coincidentally, then they’re simply marvelling at my loose, well-worn, brown leather pedal-pushers matched with a scant but utterly modest cheesecloth halter –
either
way, he doesn’t seem to notice.
Slightly
more
perturbing, though, is the shadowy figure of Black Jack leaning heavily on the fence near the Pilchard Inn, glaring pointedly down in our general direction.
La Roux gives a fine impression of complete self-absorption as he shuffles carefully around the edge of a good-sized pool, squats and peers (He has painstakingly fashioned a pokey stick from a stray twig and has already become ludicrously attached to this implement which he swishes and waves whenever the opportunity presents itself).
‘See anything?’
He doesn’t answer. He lifts some yellowing flotsam with his twig, shifts slightly, and stares some more. While he’s quietly preoccupied I resolve to ask him some leading questions.
‘I imagine you must’ve lived quite close to the sea in Cape Town. The city’s right on the coast, isn’t it?’ I begin with.
‘Must I?’ he answers haughtily. ‘
Is
it?’
He clearly doesn’t appreciate this particular line of questioning.
‘And your father’s a gynaecologist.’
La Roux unbuckles his sandles, pulls off his socks, then laboriously rolls up his canvas trousers. His legs are phenomenally ginger-hairy against a contrasting skin-tone on the bright-white side of feta.
His two feet are practically skeletal and in the dry morning heat the aroma from his absurdly long toes hinges on the fragile cusp of sweet Swiss-cheesy. He tests the pool’s temperature with the tip of his fingers, then clambers in.
The water hits just under his knee. He shuffles around awhile, sending everything cloudy, then he pauses.
‘I remember Christmas mornings,’ he whispers suddenly. ‘My father, as always, up early and working at the large oak bureau in the sitting-room, waiting for me and my brother, the tree lights twinkling, the presents wrapped, paging and paging through a thousand graphic gynaecological illustrations of chronically diseased wombs and vaginas.’
My face creases.
‘I’m starting to wonder,’ he continues, glancing over his shoulder for a second, ‘whether Black Jack might be sexually
inverted
.’
I continue frowning. ‘Inverted? What does that mean?’
‘A lover of men.’
‘
Jack?
Never.’
‘It’s just that he
will
keep staring.’
I frown (I mean how to put this
politely
?). ‘Perhaps it’s your balaclava. It does give you a slightly intimidating aura.’
‘No.’ La Roux shakes his scraggy head firmly. ‘It goes deeper. It’s something…’ he thinks for a moment, ‘…something untapped, something underneath, something… something
goosy
.’
Goosy?
‘Jack?
Untapped?’
I cackle. ‘That’s
twisted
.’
La Roux swaps his stick into his other hand and then proceeds to wave it in Jack’s general direction. Jack freezes and turns briefly to peer behind him. Luckily Patch and Feely are just within sight carrying the nets to the tennis court.
‘It has subsequently become very difficult for me’, La Roux continues, ‘to even
think
about a woman’s sexual and reproductive organs without experiencing strong feelings of fear and revulsion. And believe it or not, in certain
especially
intimate situations, I find I lose all sensation in the pads of my fingers.’
I frown. ‘That’s just
tragic
.’
La Roux nods, sadly, plainly immune to my withering sarcasm. ‘When I asked him about it, the family doctor said the only way to get over this problem was to reacquaint myself with the vagina, but in what he called a gentle, open and
unthreatening
environment. By a process of calmly inspecting and slowly re-educating. Just
glimpsing…’
He gives me a sudden, furtive glance, to see how he’s doing (Who does he think he’s
kidding
?). My face is a surly mask of violent antipathy. I think he gets the message.
‘Anyway,’ he chuckles wryly, ‘in many respects I see this strange affliction as the ultimate festive offering from my father.’
‘Give me a
Chopper
any day,’ I mutter.
He points his stick accusingly. ‘You’re still such a
baby
.’
I scowl back.
‘In defence of the vagina,’ I tell him, watching indulgently as he bends over and tries but fails to dismantle a limpet, ‘I’m pretty certain men’s genitals do their own fair share of rotting and festering.’
La Roux’s eyes widen. ‘Are you trying to destroy my sexual impulses
altogether
?’ he whispers hoarsely. I can’t tell if he’s joking. He straightens up, wipes his fingers on his trousers and shuffles around some more with a curiously unconvincing tragic air about him.
After a brief lull he pauses. ‘When I was a kid,’ he begins dreamily, ‘I once went on holiday to a farm in the Orange Free State…’
‘A place full of liberated citrus, presumably,’ I wisecrack. He yanks up his balaclava so that I can now observe his thin lips moving.
‘That was
pathetic
,’ his disembodied mouth informs me, then he carefully readjusts his head-gear to its former position. ‘Anyhow,’ he continues, ‘they had a water hole – we called it a
Boer
hole – it was like a pond, only above the ground and large – five or six metres in diameter – and round but not too deep. Concrete. Like a murky swimming-pool. Full of all kinds of crap. And I’d climb into it on hot days and romp about.
‘One day I clambered in and I was lounging against the edge, just relaxing, when suddenly a huge fish swam between my legs…’ He catches my expression. ‘I mean, my calves and my knees. And it got trapped there. Only briefly.’
‘I’ve had porcupines graze my shins before,’ I immediately trump him, ‘and I was stung by a jellyfish once on my thigh, and my leg blew up like it was badly scalded. Not here, obviously, but in an obscure region of northern Madagascar.’
La Roux is patently not the slightest bit interested. ‘In truth I think it was the single most
happy
moment of my life,’ he continues, his voice still seductively blissful, ‘to feel the weed in the water, the hot sun on my skin and that frantic fish just… just wriggling.’
He pauses. ‘Oh dear me,’ he mutters conspiratorially, his voice immediately dropping by half an octave. ‘Black Jack’s approaching.’
‘It doesn’t happen often,’ I tell him, finally getting into the swing of things, ‘but sometimes when you’re floating in the Mermaid Cove, over on the other side of the island, you occasionally get to feel the fish in the water.’
His eyes widen. ‘On your lower limbs
specifically
?’
‘Yes. Sometimes they burrow into the sandy shingle and you find yourself treading on them. And sometimes they glance off your arms when you’re swimming. But usually only tiddlers.’
‘I don’t swim,’ he reminds me.
‘Or even if you’re just paddling.’
He scowls. ‘I don’t
paddle
.’
I struggle obligingly to recall the word he’d used previously. ‘When you
romp
then,’ I exclaim, ‘when you’re
romping
.’
Jack is now standing just a few feet away from us. He’s still on the firm sand at the edge of the rocky section. He doesn’t want to trouble himself with clambering over. La Roux sniffs, turns away and continues wading. I nod half-heartedly.
‘I think you’d better tell your father,’ Jack shouts, clearly not at all affected by his apathetic reception, ‘that a segment of the cliff-top fencing next to the old chapel has just gone missing. He’ll need to replace it before some idiot tourist topples over.’
While Jack is speaking La Roux tickles me distractingly behind my knee with the fiendishly scratchy tip of his damp twig. ‘Ask him,’ he suddenly whispers, when I turn defensively and slap the spot, ‘whether Jack is short for anything.’
‘Sorry?’ (Inside me an angry dialogue is being conducted between my breasts and my brain – that
bastard
stick has only gone and made my nipples tighten!)
‘Go
on
,’ he hisses, ‘just
ask
him.’
I clear my throat and cross my arms (These are pre-Lycra days,
smart-arse
, and I’m wearing a semi-translucent pale halter top. It’s turning into an intimate Armageddon down there – my aureoles darkening dramatically, my nipples jutting like tent-pegs… ). ‘La Roux here was just wondering,’ I say loudly (perhaps, under the circumstances, without sufficient due-consideration), ‘whether the name Jack is actually short for anything.’
La Roux, once again, has his back to me, but I think I can detect his bony shoulders shaking. Jack scowls. ‘What do you mean?’
I turn to La Roux again. ‘He wants to know what you mean exactly.’
La Roux’s shoulders are now shuddering uncontrollably.
‘What does he mean,
short for anything
?’ Jack repeats.
I shrug limply.
A minute’s uneasy silence commences, only punctuated by La Roux’s hysterical snuffling. When the minute is over, and the tension’s just about to diffuse, La Roux contains his inexplicable excitement for just long enough to heighten it again. ‘I was only idly wondering,’ he creaks, ‘whether it was
short
for anything.’
Jack is quiet for a moment. He looks down at his feet, as if he is actually,
physically
walking the fine line between fury and bemusement.
‘Whether
what
is short for anything?’ he answers finally.
La Roux starts laughing again. ‘Your
name
,’ he splutters.
Jack takes a small step forward. His fists are slowly clenching and unclenching. His brown cheeks are suddenly livid.
‘I just
wondered
,’ La Roux bellows, throwing out his arms and twirling his stick infuriatingly, ‘I just
wondered
about your name.’
Jack carefully lifts his right foot up on to the rocks, then pauses, his large bulk swaying. He’s like a huge, newly blinded bison slowly negotiating the scarily multifarious world around him. Trying. Failing.
For the first time – as he sniffs and blinks in a curiously affecting slow motion – I see that he’s actually
fragile
. A mesmerizing mix of the distressingly magisterial and the irredeemably bovine (well,
hell
, it worked for John Wayne all those years).
After a few loose moments he gradually gathers himself together. ‘I’m going fishing tomorrow morning, Medve,’ he announces, turning to me directly and in the process cutting that rude dog La Roux completely.
Medve.
My bare toes curl into the rock and muck and weed. It’s gentle weather but I’m very nearly blown away.
Black Jack just used my name for the first time ever!
And so naturally, too, like he’s been secretly rehearsing it in private or something.
La Roux responds by emitting a series of musical burps. He can apparently do this to order.
‘About five,’ Jack continues stiffly, ‘in the little boat, if you fancy it.’
I nod again. ‘Well, I’ll certainly think it over. Thanks.’
He removes his foot, smiles thinly, turns and leaves.
Well I
never
.
La Roux, meanwhile, has sat himself down on the edge of the pool with his two feet dangling into the shallow water. ‘Medve!
Medve
, quickly!’ he whispers. ‘
Quickly.
Come here.’
He has his hands tightly cupped on his lap as if he’s captured a small but skittish crustacean. His balaclava has been pulled up, off his face, and is now balanced on top of his head – still maintaining its shape – like some weirdly cylindrical mobile chimney.
‘Jesus!’ he exclaims delightedly. ‘It’s really
tickling
! Come
on
. Come quickly, before it gets away.’
I stagger across the slippy rocks and join him. I squat down and peer.
‘Show.’
‘I’m not sure what it
is
exactly,’ he whispers, his keen thin lips dripping in anticipation.
‘Probably a common shrimp,’ I debunk. ‘I thought I caught a glimpse of one earlier.’
‘It’s entirely possible.
Look
.’
He opens his cupped hands gradually. I stare hard. Then harder still. His pale fingers are gently surrounding a little red organism, a mollusc, a soft thing. A deep sea creature…
I blink. A brief flash follows. The shutter lifts.
What that cheeky varmint is
actually
cradling is the disembodied, yanked back, grinning tip of his unrepentantly uncut, small-eyed, purple-lipped pecker.
La Roux blinks up at me, his wool-blotched face suffused in a childlike glow of absolute – almost
bewildered
– wonderment (He’s like a favourite nephew offering his ancient aunt his very last piece of toffee brittle. It’s
appalling
).