by Adam Thorpe
The kids keep interrupting an adult argument about migratory patterns with demands for a go at the mini-golf. If they can’t have that dolphin ride-on, then …
Its puddled dilapidation attracts David, and probably explains why it’s free. You get the clubs and balls from the café next to it, an old-fashioned place called Nelly’s Teas where jellied eels are served up in a polystyrene cup. Lisa says she’ll sit with Luke at one of the outside tables and asks David to order her a cuppa. The others go inside and wait at the counter for the waitress, who is clearing tables very slowly, as if underwater. Another Did you see Fay? She’s becoming almost familiar, surveying them in their family bliss. Dimples, toothy smile, that long red hair. Mutant gene 40,000 years ago. How did the first coppernob survive? Regarded as a freak, a god, a curse, a blessing? Very pale skin, freckles scattered over her nose. Born to keep to the shade, skulk in the shadows. The lightless back of the cave, among the stalactites. Her coat was reddish-brown. He missed that last time. Why not red-brown? Or brownish-red? Maori. Apache.
The kids are desperate for him to have a taste of jellied eel, but he explains to them that eel numbers have fallen by 98 per cent in the last five years thanks to pollution and overfishing. What he doesn’t say is that he ate eel back in NZ years ago, and the slippery cold flesh made him feel sick. It was almost as bad as those grilled caterpillars in the Congo during his fairly disastrous post-doctorate research stint on African greys. He mentions the caterpillars to divert their attention, and it works.
She’s probably fine. Most runaways are. Alternatively she could be naked and strangled at the foot of some hedge or other, like a skinned rabbit.
The busty young waitress hands over the clubs and balls. She’s called Colette, according to her name tag.
The three of them survey the course. He tells the kids how, as a boy, visiting his grandparents in Manawatu, he would play mini-golf every day, clearing pine-needle clumps out of the holes just as he is doing right now.
The first hole is simple, just a chicane. Before they start David explains that it is not as easy as it looks, that they mustn’t shout or have a hissy fit if the ball doesn’t go in the hole like they want it to. Winning is not what’s important, he tells them.
‘We’re here to have a fun time together, OK? I played a lot of mini-golf when I was a kid, so don’t expect to be as good as me and go mental when you aren’t.’
Steph insists on going first. She has Lisa’s strong character. She hits the ball.
‘Remember, Steph,’ says David, ‘there’s a lot of luck involved. But well done. Wow. Oh, wow. Beaut, Steph. A hole in one. Look at that.’
Noah hits his sideways. He gets the ball into the hole after twelve hits, and is already in tears. David’s ball clips the chicane and leaps up out of the run like a comet and straight into the weeds and pine needles and probably dog mess.
‘You’re in the lead, Steph,’ says David, knowing this won’t last.
Steph’s ball has a magnetic attraction for the hole. Noah, four years younger than his sister, gets angrier as he gets worse, and vice versa. As for David, he finds that the club is not right for him, or maybe it is Noah’s anger: his ball keeps going haywire. He clocks up nine strokes trying to get over a double humpback bridge with a chipped sidewall and a brown puddle of rain in the middle. He was pretty good at mini-golf as a boy. His ten-year-old daughter, having never played it before, is beating him by five strokes.
To take the heat off, he tells them about the fun course he would play all those years back in Manawatu. The ball had to pass between these two big round cheeks, he says. It looked just like a bum. The kids screech with delight when he says this word. Bum. The upper half of the construction, which was a clown’s eyes and nose, had been smashed by vandals. It wasn’t supposed to be a bum, it was supposed to be the cheeks on the face of a huge clown. He clips the ball with smooth confidence.
‘Beaut,’ says Noah with an unpleasant grasp of the snarky.
‘Why can’t you play now, Dad?’
‘I am playing, Stephie.’
‘But you’re no good.’
‘I’m just giving you and Noah a chance,’ he fibs.
‘Oh yeah,’ jeers Noah. ‘Just because you’re losing, Dad.’
‘It’s not a question of winning or losing, Noah. I told you. Don’t take that attitude, please. It’s so competitive.’
There is a loop-the-loop now, with dribbly swirls of graffiti on the side. Noah throws the ball, and Steph shouts at him not to be a piker. Their mother is dimly visible through the chicken-wire fence, still seated with Luke at one of the café tables.
An electric shock passes through him. Shit, he never ordered her cuppa!
His dismay is distracted by some noise. Another group has come onto the course. Oh no. They are probably from that bigger campsite a mile or so up the road: a sprawling place with ‘entertainment’ and a heated swimming pool teeming with microbes. The Milligans studiously avoided it after a preliminary spec. The group has already caught up, and is waiting at a tactful distance for David to get his ball into the loop-the-loop. Steph’s ball has shot through far too fast but somehow bounces back off the low side wall to end up inside the hole, sitting like an egg in its cup. Now his daughter is leaning on her club like Tiger Woods, watching her dad. The campsite group is also watching.
David thinks he hears laughter and begins to feel sweaty and faint. They are bikies, from the look of it – huge with leathers and big boots. David is wearing minimal esparto sandals modelled on an archaeological find, according to the owner of the green shoe shop in Lincoln. It was surprisingly full of people. Crazy name. What was it? Itchy Feet. Served by this old hippy in a wheelchair, whose own feet were bare and brown as though carved out of kauri. Would they itch, in fact? Noah kept staring at him like he’d never seen a ponytail before, let alone a wheelchair. The sandals are uncomfortable and keep falling off; maybe that’s why he is losing. (Lisa bought a pair of reiki flip-flops, which are fantastic, she claims; she can feel the energy in her ankles.) Noah is sulking under the pines, face in his hands, partly because his sister has called him a piker. At last David’s ball makes it up into the loop-the-loop. There is a rattling noise and a pause and it trickles out again from his side, bashfully. David covers his face with his hands in half-meant despair and the bikies laugh in a weirdly raucous way, as if he is entertaining them deliberately.
This time the ball makes it to the other side. He taps it into the hole.
‘Eleven,’ says Noah. ‘They’re German. Yuk.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You took eleven for that one, Dad. I counted.’
‘OK, great,’ says David, his voice rising. ‘I’m sure you’re pretty pleased.’
He waves the bikies through. They are tall and bulky, grinning and nodding at him in their leather bib pants, their cut-offs festooned with sewn-on badges. Are they mocking him, or is there a cultural misreading here? Noah was right: on some of their backs is a big circular patch showing the German eagle popping its biceps with PROUD GERMAN BIKER around the edge, with the eagle echoed in tattoos on square-shaped bared shoulders. They are very good at mini-golf, despite not knowing shit from clay. He just wishes they would keep their voices down as they rasp, growl and gargle their way from hole to hole at blitzkrieg speed.
‘They’re typically German,’ says Steph, having looked impressed and a little scared. It was as if she was dutifully echoing someone adult.
‘That’s cultural stereotyping. They’re human beings.’
‘No, they’re not,’ Noah says. ‘They’re stupid coconuts.’
‘Noah,’ David shouts, making him jump. ‘Never ever use that word!’
‘Not even if I’m eating one?’
‘I mean in the context of an insult. And you know why, don’t you?’
Noah leans on his mini-club and nods slowly and theatrically. ‘But they’re not real coconuts,’ he points out. ‘They’re all white.’
‘It’s a racist term, and I don’t ever wish to hear it from your or Stephanie’s mouth.’
He really feels upset.
‘And from my bum?’ jokes Noah.
Steph explodes into snorts. ‘Coconut from your bum!’ she wails deliriously, a kea’s mating screech. ‘That’s so yuk!’
David leaves them to it. The long tunnel looms.
‘That’s not a bum.’ Stephie giggles. ‘It’s something else.’
Noah gives a snort, as low and guttural as a dirty old man’s.
‘Give it a break, thanks,’ says David, adjusting his bum bag around his waist as if by association. He doesn’t quite know how to respond to Stephie’s comment, but his body is responding with a hot-flannel feel on his forehead. It’s a kind of appalled panic. Maybe it’s the bag interfering with his swing, but if he puts it down he’ll forget it and they’d be sunk, stranded here for weeks or maybe for ever, like illegal immigrants. He can’t believe he forgot to order Lisa’s tea. He glances over through the chicken wire. Still with Luke at the table. He should nip back and correct this. Oh, she’ll realise eventually. She’s a grown woman. He’ll abase himself, drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. All will be well.
Steph wins by a number of strokes that only their author has kept track of. ‘Sweet as!’ she cries, punching her fist. Noah is permitted to place the ball in the hole manually. His juvenile maleness is undergoing a terrible trial. David’s ball has done nothing right. Maybe he was not actually very good at mini-golf in his youth down the far side of the planet. It is hard to say because he only ever played by himself.
‘All good,’ he declares as they head for the gate and the tables. Lisa is animatedly reading to Luke. Before he can open his mouth, she says, ‘Looks like you were having a lotta fun.’
‘Steph won by yards,’ he tells her. ‘Hey, look, I completely forgot to—’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. Girls can be excellent at sport too.’
‘She cheated,’ Noah declares without any conviction, already flinching in his sister’s proximity.
Steph snorts and shakes her head. ‘So sad.’
It is, David reflects. It really is. She is so dominant. She’ll end up an exec director for sure, breaking other people’s crayons. Jesus, how can he think this of his own daughter? ‘Really sorry about forgetting your tea, Lisa.’
‘I’m fine. Aren’t we, Lukey-Lukes? Hey, why did you lot keep slapping your own bottoms and shrieking? Kinda weird.’
He tells her about the broken clown face back in Manawatu.
‘I don’t think that’s very sensible,’ she says.
‘What’s not sensible?’
‘Lavatory humour.’
‘You cannot be serious.’
He married a scamp of an Aussie and her mischievous sense of fun. The scamp became a responsible mother and the fun has all but dried up, although she laughs on the phone or on Skype with her friends. The children want a second turn, and Noah slips off the bench and shows his bottom – pulling his shorts down, taking the undies with them. People at the other tables are looking.
‘Just stop that,’ snaps David, blushing furiously because he knows what the people are thinking. He would blush as a kid when a teacher asked who had stolen this or that, even though he’d done nothing wrong. It was uncontrollable, a freckled white to crimson, blushing under his red hair because he was blushing and so subsequently blushing an even deeper crimson. But now he was an adult! For Chrissake! ‘If you don’t want it whacked, Noah, pull them up. Right now!’
Lisa shakes her head. ‘Whacking a kid in public is illegal.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t ever get to whack a kid in private.’
‘Your threat was all bluster.’
‘Well, bluster works. Ask my colleagues.’
Their voices were technically quiet, as if they were talking through headphones, and they weren’t looking at each other. ‘What worked was your fairly aggressive tone of voice. Empty threats are not a great approach to firm parenting.’
‘OK, I’m a shit dad. Say it.’
‘You’re a good dad. But not a perfect one. You have to admit now and again to making mistakes. Telling that story about bums was probably a mistake, if you think about it. Bum is a trigger word, like arse or tit. Nobody’s going to beat you for it.’
His face is melting in the self-stoked fire. ‘I didn’t make any mistake, Lisa. I was just telling them a funny story from my childhood. They thought it was funny too. Please try to be less judgemental, it’s pretty tiring.’
‘You have a problem about being judged?’
‘You never used to be so judgemental.’
‘You’d rather I just shut up while you yack on? Play the obedient Sheila?’
‘Dolphins are our favourite animals because they’re threatened from stinction,’ Noah says with an infinite sadness in his eyes.
‘I hope I don’t yack, Lisa.’
‘You do talk quite a lot, actually. Ever since we started.’
He turns to look at her. ‘That’s maybe because I’m relaxing. I’m actually enjoying myself for once.’
‘Dolphins are even more intelligent than me,’ Steph announces with an arch look.
Lisa scoffs. ‘I mean started started. From the beginning. Ab ovo.’
They started at uni some fifteen – no, seventeen years ago. He has always thought of himself as quiet and considerate. Never in seventeen years has Lisa accused him of being an earbasher.
And his wife, in certain company, talks a great deal. She can stay on the phone or on Skype for hours. He hesitates before saying it. He could just retire from the scrap right now, like sensible animals do. But he is a non-sensible human.
‘And, of course, you never open your own mouth, Lisa.’
Lisa shrugs. ‘I think you just assume that the man has more right to talk than the woman, unless it’s about domestic issues.’
‘You’re nearly as telligent, though,’ Noah concedes as if after careful thought or out of solidarity.
Luke is slapping his mother gently on the face, then not so gently, as if testing her resilience. Already the male brute. David’s mouth is tense, a tense coil of rope. Out of this mouth might come words with which he could hang himself. The pasty, bored-looking and mostly fat folk seated outside the café are watching him, as Brits do. Not minding their own business. Stickybeaking into private matters. Neighbourhood fucking watchfulness. He glares back and they turn their heads away.
‘Let’s go sit in the dunes,’ he says. ‘With an ice block. What d’you reckon?’
They all go inside Nelly’s Teas to return the golf gear and buy their ice blocks. The young waitress called Colette takes the gear and says, ‘Dead good is mini-golf, but it’s not a thing any more. Like yo-yos.’ David smiles in fake agreement. Her thin white kitchen coat exaggerates her bust. One button is missing. No sign of Nelly herself, presumably long dead, but it’s a nice café apart from the filthy tables: very English and shabbily authentic down to the name. There are truffles for sale, made in a local monastery. A leaflet claims its gift shop sells stuff like pottery, fudge and honey, apart from books. Our Lady of Grace Abbey. They can visit it, David thinks. Despite believing that monotheistic religion is a historical and environmental disaster, he is attracted to monasteries. The contemplative life.
In the end they collectively succumb to ice creams in the form of Magnums, and Colette digs through the freezer with loud rustles as if their choices are annoyingly unusual. Monasteries and murderers, what a world of extremes. The small mongrel dog gives him hope it might not be murder, in fact. The girl went missing in late January. Almost six months ago. She was last seen at 16.22, Friday 27 January 2012. So precise! No doubt by a CCT V camera. Through a chill winter drizzle. Pink laces. Steph has a pair of pink laces, as far as he recalls. It’s not looking good. January cold, and now it’s summer, or what passes for summer in England. Maybe she’s begging somewhere on a busy pavement, with the dog next to her. Vulnerable. He’ll loo
k out for her when he’s back at work. A daggy bundle in a furry parka by the mouth of a Tube station, mournful eyes the same as the dog’s. Take me to London.
‘Sorry, Steph?’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘No,’ he insists, ‘you just whispered something.’
‘Er, no. I did not. Daddy, are your ears going mad?’
Maybe it was Noah, who now asks, ‘What is that girl missing?’
‘Herself.’ He has unaccountably blushed to the roots of his equally red hair, a steaming hot flannel pressed against his skin. Except that he knows it’s all in the head; no one else can see it. ‘She’s gone missing.’
‘Whoa, go easy on the detail,’ Lisa murmurs.
Noah frowns, looking up at his father. ‘You mean she’s lost in a wood? Why have you gone really really red, Daddy? Like Postman Pat’s van?’
‘Crikey,’ his wife chuckles quietly, ‘so you have.’
‘It’s pretty hot in here.’
Steph snorts. ‘She’s chopped up in a basket, more likely.’
‘Yuk,’ says Noah, his little hand twitching inside David’s.
Lisa sighs. ‘Where on earth do you learn that kind of silly nonsense, Steph?’
‘I want to go find her,’ Noah pronounces. ‘I have to go find her,’ his son continues, crossing his arms and stamping his foot. ‘I have to. Not if she’s chopped up,’ he adds cautiously. The waitress returns from the freezer with the five Magnums, and Noah’s determination unravels into an outstretched hand and the huge eyes of a starvation victim. If his son and his wife have noticed, David thinks with alarm, then everyone must notice.
There’s an awed silence as the Magnums are distributed. ‘Guys, I’ve an idea. This great idea.’ David’s blush is retreating, it helps to speak, to be proactive. There again, it has no logic. ‘You go start on your ice creams outside. Leave this to me.’
Lisa ushers the gang out. As he sorts through his change, he asks the waitress if she’s got any more copies of the missing poster. The waitress stares at him under her mop of curly hair, then draws her little white coat closer over her breasts as if he’s been peeping into their deep gully. She can’t be eastern European, David thinks, as she’s not smiling.