After a while, having said nothing, Big slowly begins eating again. Gradually Patch and Feely follow suit (La Roux and I merely chew on our tongues and glare at each other). Big feeds well and at his leisure, then – when he’s finally replete, has wiped his lips clean with a paper napkin, has pushed his plate away and cordially complimented the chefette on her sterling endeavours – he turns, scratches his stomach idly and fixes his most sternly penetrating gaze on me.
‘Whistling, you say?’ he asks softly.
I clear my throat. ‘Yes. And singing too.’
Big rubs his chin, slowly. ‘It’s difficult to condone violence, Medve,’ he tells me calmly, ‘under any circumstances, but to sit on someone’s face because they disturb you when you’re fishing…’ He shakes his head as if in utter disbelief at the things he’s been hearing. ‘Only a saint could have reacted less savagely under those conditions.’
La Roux’s smug expression melts like a cheap chocolate (from almost-cocky to very-tragic) in a mere matter of seconds. My own face starts glowing with an incendiary piety.
‘La Roux,’ Big turns to him decisively, ‘there are obviously some rather important things you need to understand about my middle daughter. The most important of these is that everything she ever learned in the fishing department she learned from me, her father.
‘I’m afraid we all take the art of angling very seriously around here,’ he smiles angelically. ‘Now finish up your lunch and let’s go inside for a while. I’ve actually got something quite wonderful in mind for those troublesome fingers of yours.’
La Roux’s thin lips tighten fractionally. ‘Oh yes?’ he manages. ‘And what might that be exactly?’ (I think he’s having awful visions of thumb-screws or something.)
‘I am going to teach you how to crochet,’ Big beams. ‘It’s always been a great solution to the tricky problem of bad circulation.’
He stands up. ‘Come on,’ he beckons benevolently, ‘follow me.’
So I got off lightly. The important thing is I know I did, and this apprehension will help to guide all my future decisions and thoughts and behaviour, and will ultimately shape me into a better person. (Yeah. If you actually believe this kind of fatuous Dr Spock bullshit you’re in for a rather rude awakening. The truth is my teen-trouble-making facility is now as well-honed and destructively arbitrary as a badly wired Exocet thingummy. But when I finally blow – and boy, will I blow – take succour from the fact that I’m fully intending to take that bastard Spock right down with me. Screaming and burning.)
Okay, so I’m still pretty-much the self-same rankly remorseless bitch I ever was after my trying lunch-time excitations, but even so I celebrate my unexpected getting-off-lightly by selflessly helping my hard-working (if relentlessly fleshy) sibling with the washing-up.
As I’m sure you can imagine, this is about as rare a sight in these parts as a dodo getting accidentally caught up inside the flight propeller of a mid-air 747.
While I clumsily swill my two huge hands around inside a sink of hot water, Patch dries gamely, and we indulge in a rather mystifying conversation about my long, dark night spent in the questionable company of Mr Jack Henry (Patch is totally into dream interpretation. She’s like a pre-pubescent Freud but without the beard and the sexual fixation).
‘So you dreamed Jack Henry was imprisoned again, but this time he was locked up inside your brain?’ she summarizes.
‘That’s about the gist of it. And I kept telling him he was free and that he should bugger off, but he wouldn’t listen.’
Patch pauses and considers. ‘I really like it,’ she says, ‘it’s kind of clever.’
‘Well I appreciate your dream approval, Patch,’ I snipe, ‘but what about the hidden meaning?’
‘It’s something philosophical,’ she smiles, ‘which I guess must mean that your considerable intelligence – so absent in your day-to-day thoughts and actions – gets all its exercise unconsciously.’
‘Is that a joke?’ I ask uneasily.
‘Uh, no, but here’s my interpretation anyway,’ she quickly continues. ‘For some reason you seem to be preoccupied by the notion that a person’s freedom isn’t defined by their physical conditions…’
‘Pardon?’ I turn around to peer at her and accidentally drip suds on to the tiling.
‘You’re dripping,’ she scolds. I guiltily shove my hands over the sink again.
‘It’s a kind of cynicism,’ she explains. ‘You think Jack Henry – for all of his insight and wise words and everything – is actually in a prison of his own construction, and that even now he’s free he won’t be able to escape it…’ She pauses. ‘Which in my book is an interesting but fairly depressing analysis. I myself have a much greater faith in the strength and resilience of the human animal.’
‘You’re right,’ I tell her. ‘I am much cleverer when I’m sleeping.’
She sniggers. ‘I’ll say you are.’
For some indefinable reason her reaction strikes me as slightly excessive. I frown. ‘Meaning?’
The snigger expands into a chuckle.
‘Meaning?’
Her eyes widen. ‘La Roux.’
‘What about him?’
She gnaws delightedly on her thumb-nail, her cheeks glowing. ‘You really thought you’d done a job on him, didn’t you?’
I slowly shake dry my hands as she ducks behind the table.
‘A job? How exactly?’
‘The black eye, the tooth and the other stuff.’
She’s laughing so hard all of a sudden that I can barely understand what she’s saying.
‘But the thing is…’ she continues, now almost bent double, ‘the thing is…’
I put my hands on my hips. ‘Tell me the thing, why don’t you?’
Her convulsing fingers scrabble on the table-top. ‘The thing is, it was all make-up. Almost all of it!’
‘Make-up?’
‘His injuries!’
‘Make-up?!’ My jaw drops. ‘Are you serious?’
She nods in mute hilarity.
‘And… and the tooth?’
‘A cap! He can pull it off whenever the fancy takes him. A final absolute stroke of bloody genius, if you ask me.’
But I am not asking. In fact, I am lost for words, temporarily. ‘So was Big in on everything?’ I eventually manage.
‘He was!’ she explodes, ‘and little Feely too. We all were.’
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. My feet are suddenly glued to the kitchen tiles, my fists are slowly clenching and unclenching, I am gasping and choking and blinking and panting. My rage is wild and absolute and all-consuming.
Trumped! My whole family employed in a plot to humiliate me by that persistently whistling, masturbating, fountain-pissing, sleep-walking, high-thigh-squeezing interloper? How could they! Even Big? Even he? (I mean, suddenly developing a sense of humour without even warning me?)
Patch is still laughing a full five minutes later, clutching ineffectually at her big belly, her round face gargoyled with uncontrollable hysteria.
‘Okay,’ I eventually splutter, when I am finally capable of speaking coherently again, ‘what – if you can actually remember – is that irritating thing people always say about revenge?’
She stops laughing. ‘Oooh. Best served cold,’ she tells me, her small nose twitching.
‘Right,’ I smile, ‘and that, my dear sister, is exactly how it’s going to be. I have a plan. It’s a nasty one. And I will be needing your assistance…’
Patch immediately starts rubbing her two fat hands together, her laughter forgotten, her cheeks drawn in hungrily. A second serving? Another helping? A double whammy? I mean, what could be better?
Absolutely nothing.
Chapter 14
So I don’t want to keep harping on about it, but do you know what really gets to me about this whole, damn, phoney, black-eyed, broken-toothed La Roux-inspired travesty? It’s the way it was all arranged with so much guile and finesse and – I hate to say it – real, ho
nest-to-goodness subtlety (perhaps there’s actually more than meets the average untrained eye to this rank outsider’s military history).
I mean, making me think I’d had such a sweet little victory when Big so unexpectedly took my side over the face-sitting incident. And that ludicrous ‘teaching him to crochet’ business. And the infuriating finger pinching. And my – come on, I have to admit it – ridiculous smugness when I thought I’d inadvertently done him a serious injury (all that ‘Am I more of a bruiser than I thought I was?’ crap. How embarrassing).
To think I actually imagined I’d got off scot-free. And all those silly pangs of guilt I nearly considered suffering (no matter how briefly) at his expense. All that wasted moral energy!
My God, what a triumph. And how to top it? There’s little doubt in my fevered mind that it’ll take some doing. But never, ever let it be said that canny Miss Medve can’t rise to a challenge. He’s thrown down the gauntlet, and blow me backwards if I’m not calmly bending over and casually retrieving it.
What is a gauntlet anyway? (I only hope it’s hygienic.)
Right. So here’s how I arrange things: first off, Patch is sworn to secrecy over having let slip the fact that La Roux is not really as seriously injured as he seems to be. More importantly, she is immediately sent along to tell him how much I would appear to regret my misdoings, how tender and tearful I currently seem, consumed as I am by my powerful and overwhelming feelings of awful remorsefulness.
Big is to be kept in line by being told by this most devious sister of mine that my sudden rash of guilty feelings are teaching me exactly the kind of fruitful lesson in personal responsibility any parent should be proud of instilling (the kind of lesson I have so far, apparently – according to Patch, and Big actively agrees with her – been basically incapable of learning).
So where’s the harm – she asks – in temporarily extending my useful bout of moral education? Where indeed, the short-arsed traitor tells her, damn him.
Patch soon scurries back to base (my table-tennis headquarters), her clutch of missions successfully undertaken, absolutely glowing with self-satisfaction. And when Mr La Roux happens to pass this way himself, just a few minutes later (patently intent on pressing home his advantage), this very useful and utterly duplicitous little fattie scarpers, a fifty-pence piece clutched inside her hot hand and some careful instructions to head for the mainland (a ten-minute walk while the tide is low) to buy me something very particular from the tourist-trap newsagents in Bigbury-on-Sea to further facilitate my dastardly machinations.
When Patch has gone I can finally give La Roux my full attention (I’m actually rather busy painting my pottery, but I glance up regularly whenever the need arises. Come on. I don’t want to be too obvious, now, do I?).
‘So how was the crochet lesson, then?’ I ask him solicitously.
La Roux pulls something out of his pocket. ‘Big gave me this,’ he holds up a needle.
‘Ah. The crochet implement.’
‘And this too.’
From the other pocket he withdraws some wool. Yellow.
‘Ah. The means of production.’
‘He says I have a natural talent. He thinks I should get into lace-making. He’s always wanted to do it himself but he says he doesn’t have the patience.’
I smile weakly at this notion and continue my painting. La Roux casts on, meanwhile, performs a couple of clumsy stitches (for show, principally) then quickly shoves his pitiful endeavours back into his pockets.
‘Need a hand with that?’ he eventually whistles. (The de-capped tooth is still interfering a little with his vocalizing.)
I look up. ‘What? With those fingers? Aren’t they still troubling you like they were earlier?’
‘Uh…’ he quickly glances down at them.
I lay my brush on the table.
‘La Roux…’
He looks up again.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s just… I was… I was only wondering…’ I peer modestly towards the ceiling.
‘What?’
‘Well, whether there was any way…’ I falter. His face stares intently back at me, his every feature cut into an almost marble-carved rictus of anticipation (The harder I look, incidentally, the more clearly I see what a botched-up job that make-over was. Jesus wept! And to think I still went right on and fell for it!)
‘What are you trying to say, exactly?’ he mutters.
I take a deep breath (this is killing me). ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m really, really sorry. I suppose I must’ve got pretty carried away, earlier. But I so much regret the broken tooth and the eye injury that I’d be willing to do just about anything…’
1‘And the knuckle,’ he interrupts.
‘That too,’ I gurgle.
‘And the bite on my cheek.’
‘Naturally,’ I squeak.
He pauses and his eyes tighten, ‘And the fingers…’
‘Yes.’ I chew my lip (quite adorably, under the circumstances – well it’s either that or I’m going to have to spit on him). ‘It’s just I had no idea my sitting on you like that would have so many unexpected… um… repercussions.’
(Ah. Like launching a fart. Just one little shove and he’s flying.)
‘But don’t you remember’, he whines artfully, ‘how I explained the other day about my father and that awful gynaecological business?’
‘Of course I do,’ I purr. ‘Christmas Day. You and your brother. Spookie the dog. The rotting and festering. I remember perfectly.’
‘Spookie?’ he sounds confused. ‘I don’t ever recall mentioning him.’
‘Oh,’ my eyes widen, ‘perhaps I got the wrong end of the stick there, for some reason.’
La Roux ponders awhile.
‘You know, I’m uncertain whether I might’ve mentioned previously how I went to see a doctor over the problem with my fingers and he said that the thing to do…’ he catches my eye and then suddenly stops talking, but his unspoken and (plainly) malign intent hangs in the air like a bad-meat kite in a high wind. Stinking hideously.
My eyes widen (Lord, this is easy). ‘What thing exactly?’
‘Something specialists in the area call… um…’ (I can see even he thinks this is cheeky. So I try and help him out.)
‘Aversion therapy?’
He smiles (just a touch of unease there, around the edges of his mouth). ‘Uh… no. The direct opposite. More like a sort of… well, a sort of curing with kindness.’
His tone, at this point – as I’m sure you can imagine – is quite revoltingly ingratiating.
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ I tell him (feeling the need to take the initiative a little, not to give in too easily, to wriggle, to struggle), ‘but I once read something fascinating about aversion therapy,’ I lie, ‘in some of Thurber’s dog writings…’
La Roux scowls. ‘Thurber? Who’s he?’
I don’t bother answering (I mean, the ignorance of the man), I simply say, ‘In one of Thurber’s stories there was a badly trained bloodhound called Charlatan…’
La Roux frowns. ‘That’s an odd name for an animal.’
‘Well he was a very odd man. He was born in Ohio.’
‘Right.’ La Roux crosses his arms (not good body language, so I babble on, rapidly).
‘Anyway, Charlatan had this awful habit of stealing the remains of the pork roast every Sunday when Thurber was cooling it in the pantry after dinner. For sandwiches, later.’
‘Here’s a question,’ La Roux interrupts. ‘How on earth did Charlatan get into the pantry in the first place?’
‘He opened the door with his paws. It was a knack he’d perfected. He was a very intelligent creature, but horribly devious.’
‘Hmmmn,’ La Roux ponders, ‘they needed to fix up some kind of bolt arrangement. That would almost certainly have stopped his antics.’
‘Ah,’ I shake my head, ‘but that’s where you’re missing the point entirely. Thurber felt resorting to a
bolt would’ve undermined general man–dog household relations. All trust would’ve been lost. What they needed was a situation of greater not lesser understanding.’
‘Oh,’ La Roux starts frowning again.
‘Anyhow, Thurber decided to solve his problem by trying a little aversion therapy on Charlatan. And for the next three weeks, every time he put the pork roast into the pantry he would do something unexpected to the carcass – like a mouse trap inside it, or a small incendiary device. Or applying rat poison. Or some of that powder you get in joke shops that makes you guff like a monkey…’
La Roux looks appalled. Perhaps I’ve waxed too lyrical. My imagination is plainly rampant today.
‘The point is, in the end Charlatan learned his lesson and he never stole the pork roast again.’
La Roux is still not happy. ‘I’d’ve fixed a bolt and to hell with all the other business,’ he opines stubbornly.
I nod. ‘I know what you mean. Perhaps Thurber’s techniques were a little excessive, but his intentions, in principal, were pure and loving. He adored that dog. He simply wanted a positive renewal of trust between them.’
‘But how does all this affect me?’ La Roux asks (seeming rather to have lost the plot again).
‘I have a plan,’ I tell him, firmly girding my loins (not an attractive notion, I’ll admit, with all that residual bruising). ‘It’s still in its early stages. It’s madly formative, and you may well think it’s stupid. But I personally think it’s a corker…’
Already he looks interested.
‘To try and pay you back for all the awful damage I inflicted this morning – although, frankly, the whistling was unbearably provoking – I want to do something helpful, in my own small way, to try and renew your faith in the female anatomy.’
La Roux’s eyebrows rise hilariously. I pause for a moment. I need to be careful and stealthy. This man is a professional bullshitter himself. I might’ve got him hooked, but I don’t want to risk losing him by reeling him in too quickly.
‘I mean, I could draw you a few pictures to start off with and explain some things to you that might seem frightening or confusing. And then you could sneak a tiny little peek at me – I mean while I’m still in my underwear, and from several feet away – just to get into the swing of things. And we could take it one step at a time until…’
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