Her mother also listens. A cat pads into the bathroom, sits down and commences licking its paws. There are now three cats in the room: one on the windowsill, one in the bath (where it’s just squatting to defecate over the plug-hole) and one sitting by the door.
‘This house is full of stinking cats,’ her mother grumbles. ‘How can we have rats in a house full of stinking cats?’
Valentine doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes. She places a finger to her lips.
Her mother ignores her. ‘Bobby’s sur le point de chier énormément,’ she announces.
‘Huh?’
Valentine is still listening out, intently, for another squeak.
‘Bobby. The stinking cat. He’s shitting on the plug.’
Valentine’s eyes fly open. She turns. She does a quick double-take.
‘No! Bobby!’ she yells. ‘STOP!’
* * *
‘Football’s bad enough,’ Jen grumbles, attacking the coffee machine with a renewed ferocity, ‘but golf? Urgh! You just can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere – like a contagious disease.’
‘“A good walk, spoiled,” I believe the saying goes.’
As he speaks, Gene reaches under the counter and withdraws a small, black notepad (with a broken, red Bic shoved into its metal binder). He opens the book, removes the pen, jots down a quick reminder about the squeaking barstool, then turns to the back page and in large, block letters writes: IT’S STUART RANSOM – THE FAMOUS PRO GOLFER, STUPID!
He then casually leans back and proffers Jen the pad.
‘In fact this really lovely friend of mine called Candy Rose, who I first met at jazz/tap classes when I was nine …’ Jen pauses, ruminatively, pointedly ignoring the pad. ‘Although – strictly speaking – we already knew each other, by sight, from nursery school …’
Ransom yawns and glances down at his phone.
‘Anyhow,’ Jen blithely continues, ‘Candy works for this animal refuge near Wandon End, and they were desperate to expand their workspace into some adjacent farmland. The farmer seemed perfectly happy to rent it out to them, but for some strange reason the council kept raising all these petty objections to their planning application. Then the next thing we know, this huge, twenty-five-acre plot –’
‘The yamabiru.’ Ransom suddenly turns, quite deliberately, and addresses himself directly to Gene. ‘The Japanese land leech. The mountains are their natural habitat, but over recent years they’ve taken to hitching a ride down on to the flatlands with packs of roaming boar and deer. They’ve become a real pest in the towns where they enjoy slithering into people’s socks and quietly ingesting a quick takeaway meal …’
‘Jesus!’ Gene is revolted. ‘How big?’
‘Small. Around half an inch to begin with, but they can swell to almost ten times that size. I had one gnawing away at my ankle but I didn’t have a clue about it till I felt this nasty twinge by the fourth and yanked off my shoe. At first I thought it was just a thorn or a thistle, but then I realized my sock was totally soaked …’ he pauses, dramatically, ‘… saturated with my own blood.’
‘Wow!’ Jen is clearly impressed. ‘A land leech? That’s wild!’
‘A yamabiru.’ Ransom nods. ‘I swear I nearly shat myself.’
‘Spell that out for me …’ Jen snatches the pad from Gene. ‘I’m gonna look it up on the internet.’
‘Did it hurt?’ Gene wonders.
‘Nah. It was more the shock of it than anything. I mean the sheer volume of …’
‘Wow!’ Jen repeats. ‘So what did you do with it? Did you kill it? Did you stamp on it? SPLAT!’
Jen stamps her foot, violently. ‘Did it explode like a water-bomb? I bet you did. I bet you killed it.’
‘Damn, fuckin’ right I would’ve!’ Ransom exclaims, indignant. ‘But I never got the chance. The little swine’d drunk its fill and scarpered.’
‘So how …?’ Gene looks mystified.
‘The course quack. He identified the wound. Said it was a pretty common problem on golf courses in those parts.’
‘Yik!’ Jen is mesmerized. She is still holding the pad.
‘Did you quit the match?’ Gene wonders.
‘Quit?’ Ransom looks astounded. ‘Whadd’ya take me for?! I poured a small bottle of iced water over my head, smoked a quick fag, downed a quart of Scotch and finished in a perfectly respectable five over par.’
A short silence follows. Ransom takes a long swig of his beer.
‘Although the leeches were the least of my problems in Japan.’ He hiccups. ‘Oops.’ He places his hand over his mouth. ‘It turns out the tournament had been arranged by the Yakuza …’
‘The Japanese mafia?’ Gene’s eyes widen.
‘Yep. They were extorting cash from local businessmen by forcing them to take part and then charging them huge entry fees. I kept wondering at the time why all the course officials seemed so jittery …’
‘Bloody golf !’ Jen exclaims, slapping the pad down, forcefully. ‘Even the word is ridiculous – like a cat vomiting up a giant hair-ball: GOLLUFF! ’ she huskily intones, rolling her eyes while making an alarming retching motion with her throat. Both men turn to stare at her, alarmed. ‘Just name me any game,’ Jen challenges them, ‘I mean any sport on the planet more selfish than golf is.’
Silence.
‘Formula One,’ Gene finally responds.
‘Shooting,’ Ransom suggests, cocking and aiming an imaginary gun at her.
‘Yeah …’ Jen’s plainly not convinced. ‘But could you really call that a sport, as such?’
‘KA-BOOM!’
Ransom fires. It’s a clean shot.
‘They have an Olympic team,’ Gene says, snatching up the pad again, opening it and proffering it to her.
‘It’s not only golf, though.’ Jen waves the pad away. ‘I can’t stand tennis, either. I hate tennis. To my way of thinking it’s just a game invented by idiots, for idiots. Simple as.’
Before Jen can further substantiate this hypothesis, Gene has grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face the back wall of the bar. ‘What’s got into you tonight?’ he hisses.
Jen gazes up at him, wide-eyed. ‘I hate tennis, Gene.’ She shrugs (raising both hands, limp-wristedly, like a world-weary Jewish dowager). ‘Is that suddenly such a crime?’
Gene studies her face for a second, grimaces, releases her arm, then slaps the black notebook shut and tosses it – defeated – back under the counter.
Ransom downs the remainder of his beer in a single gulp, then burps, majestically, from the other side of the bar. Jen snorts, ribaldly. Gene shoots her a warning look.
Her mother swallows the paste and then gently belches.
‘You really shouldn’t swallow it,’ Valentine mutters. She’s just flushed the cat mess down the toilet and is now washing her hands, fastidiously, under the hot tap.
‘I’ve always swallowed it,’ her mother maintains.
‘Well, you taught me not to swallow it.’ Valentine turns the tap off.
Her mother inspects her teeth, critically, in the bathroom mirror.
‘You’re not meant to swallow it,’ Valentine persists, ‘you’re meant to spit it out.’
‘Really? Il dit ça sur le tube?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Does it say that on the tube?’
Valentine shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Have a look.’
Her mother grabs the tube and proffers it to Valentine. Valentine shakes the water off her hands, takes the tube and inspects it.
‘Does it say you shouldn’t swallow?’
Her mother peers at the tube over Valentine’s shoulder.
‘No.’ Valentine frowns. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily …’
Her mother recommences brushing again. Valentine places the tube back into the tooth mug. She watches her mother for a while and then: ‘I think you’ve probably been brushing for long enough now,’ she says.
‘Really?’ Her mother stops b
rushing. ‘How long is “enough”?’
Valentine shrugs. ‘Two minutes?’
‘And how long have I …?’
‘About four.’
Her mother stares at her, blankly.
‘Four minutes. One, two, three, four …’
Valentine slowly counts the digits out on to her fingers. ‘So you’ve basically been brushing for almost double the amount of time you need to.’
Valentine illustrates this point, visually, by dividing the four fingers into two.
Her mother stares at Valentine’s fingers, intrigued. ‘If two twos are double,’ she wonders, ‘then what about three threes? Are three threes double?’
‘Uh … no.’ Valentine shakes her head. ‘Three times three is nine. That’s triple. Two times three is double.’
‘Two threes are six,’ her mother says.
‘Exactly.’ Valentine nods, encouragingly. ‘Two times three is six. Well done.’
She holds up six fingers and divides them in half.
‘Okay’ – her mother is now concentrating extremely hard – ‘and twice times fifty-fivety?’
‘Two times fifty-five is one hundred and ten.’ Valentine nods again. ‘Well done. That’s double, too.’
‘And twice times –’
‘You generally say two times,’ Valentine interrupts, ‘and it’s always double. Two of anything is always double. That’s the rule.’
She turns to dry her hands on a towel.
‘My teeth still feel furry, though,’ her mother murmurs, taking a small step forward and staring, fixedly, into the mirror again. ‘I want them to feel clean. I want them to feel toutes lisses.’
‘We’ve talked about this before.’ Valentine gently takes the toothbrush from her. ‘You just think they aren’t clean, but they are. Remember how the dentist …?’
‘You’re being unbelievably patronizing,’ her mother exclaims, suddenly irritable.
She pauses.
‘Condescendant! And by the way,’ she continues, ‘I find it really disgusting that you flushed the cat mess down the loo.’
She goes and peers into the toilet bowl.
‘Je n’ai pas t’élevée comme ça! Ça fait trop commun.’
Valentine is inspecting her own, clear complexion in the bathroom mirror. The cat sitting closest to the doorway commences scratching itself, vigorously.
‘The toilet bowl is filthy! It’s disgusting,’ her mother grumbles. She turns to inspect the cat. ‘And these cats are disgusting, too. So many of them, et tellement poilus! In fact this entire room is disgusting. All the fitments are disgusting. The light-fitment, the blind, even the colour is disgusting. Especially the colour.’
‘You used to adore these tiles,’ Valentine tells her. ‘The bathroom was one of the main reasons why you and Dad first fell in love with this house.’
‘Please!’ her mother snorts. ‘Impossible! I don’t believe you! This shade of pink? Taramasalata pink? Vomit pink? It’s vile! Disgusting!’
‘You’re finding an awful lot to be disgusted about tonight,’ Valentine observes, dryly.
Her mother considers this notion for a moment, and then, ‘Because there’s a lot to be disgusted by, I suppose,’ she sighs.
‘You know it’s always struck me as ridiculous,’ Gene says, removing a large jar of salted cashews from under the counter, unscrewing the lid and then carefully topping up Ransom’s bar-snacks, ‘that golf doesn’t have the status of an Olympic sport yet.’
‘I do quite enjoy the odd match of ping-pong,’ Jen quietly ruminates from the rear, ‘but then it’s a completely different order of game to proper tennis.’
‘Well there’s the table part, for starters,’ Gene mutters (although his voice is pretty much obliterated as Jen commences flushing a clean jug of water through the coffee machine).
‘Golf,’ Ransom is sullenly addressing his beer bottle. ‘Goll-oll-llolf.’
He frowns. ‘It isn’t stupid,’ he protests. ‘What’s so bloody stupid about it?’
He turns to Gene. ‘Do you think it’s stupid?’
Gene shrugs, helplessly.
‘Goll-lluf,’ Ransom repeats, exploring each individual letter with his tongue and his teeth.
‘Although I do find snooker quite selfish,’ Jen suddenly interjects (as the water finally completes its noisy cycle), ‘and snooker’s a table sport, so it can’t be entirely about the furniture, can it?’
Gene opens his mouth to respond and then closes it again, stumped.
‘I don’t even understand what you mean by selfish,’ Ransom grumbles, checking his phone and sending a quick text.
‘Well’ – Jen carefully adjusts an eyelash (which has briefly become unglued) – ‘by selfish I suppose I mean …’ She gnaws on her lower lip, thoughtfully. ‘I dunno. Selfish … Self-centred. Self-obsessed. Self-indulgent. Self-absorbed …’
‘I think we might best summarize Jen’s position,’ Gene quickly interjects, ‘as a borderline-irrational hatred of all so-called “individual” sports.’
‘Ahhh.’ Ransom finally starts to make sense of things.
‘Although I do quite like bowling,’ Jen demurs.
‘People generally bowl in a team.’ Gene shrugs.
‘And gymnastics. I like gymnastics.’
‘Ditto.’
‘And I’ve always liked the javelin,’ Jen presses on. ‘In fact I love the javelin. There’s something really … really basic and primeval about the javelin.’
To illustrate her point, Jen lobs an imaginary javelin towards Eugene’s head.
‘Okay. So the theory’s not entirely watertight,’ Gene concedes, flinching.
‘And surfing …’ Jen persists. ‘I really, really –’
‘I USED TO BE A SURFER!’ Ransom suddenly yells, tossing down his phone and leaping up from his stool. ‘I USED TO BE A BLOODY SURFER! EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT!’
‘Uh … Could you just …?’ Jen raises a sardonic hand to her ear.
‘I did! I DID!’ Ransom is bouncing, hyperactively, from foot to foot. ‘Everybody knows that. Ask anybody! Ask … Ask him …’ Ransom points at Gene. ‘Surfing was my life. I was a total, surfing freak. I loved it. I lived it. I had the tan, the boarding shorts, the flip-flops, the bleached hair …’
‘The hair was pretty extravagant,’ Gene concurs.
‘All the way down to there, it was …’ Ransom lightly touches his chest with his free hand. ‘I kept it that length for years. It was like my talisman, my trademark, my signature …’
‘Didn’t you insure it at one point for some inordinately huge amount?’ Gene asks.
‘Half a million squid.’ Ransom nods. ‘Although it was just some cheap publicity stunt dreamed up by my ex-manager.’
‘Ah …’ Gene affects nonchalance.
‘But I was in all the fashion mags,’ Ransom persists. ‘Started my own clothing line. Had lucrative contracts with two types of styling gels. Modelled for Westwood in London, McQueen in New York, Gaultier in Paris – which is where I first met Karma …’
He stares at Jen, expectantly.
‘Karma,’ he repeats, ‘Karma Dean? The model? The muse? Come on! You must’ve heard of Karma Dean!’
‘Hmmn?’
Jen just gazes back at him, blankly.
Her mother is perched on the edge of the bed, her slight but curvaceous frame encased in a delicate, apricot-coloured silk nightdress. She is staring at Valentine, expectantly. Valentine is standing close by, looking puzzled. She is holding a small, black vibrator in her hand.
‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ she eventually murmurs, ‘but the battery’s completely dead.’
Her mother’s mouth starts to quiver. Her eyes fill with tears.
‘I’m really, really sorry, Mum,’ Valentine repeats.
‘Can’t we just take one from the video?’ her mother wheedles. ‘We’ve done that before, remember? Just take one from the remote control!’
‘I don’t think that would work.’ Valentine sp
eaks softly and in measured tones. ‘It’s a different size battery.’
‘No! No it’s not!’ Her mother stamps her foot. ‘You’re lying! You’re just fobbing me off again, same as always!’
‘I’m not lying, Mum. In fact I’m pretty certain –’
‘Stop calling me that!’ her mother snaps.
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m not your “mum”. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m a person! I have a name! My name is Frédérique!’
‘Like I was saying,’ Valentine persists, ignoring this last interjection, ‘I’m pretty certain that the ones in the remote are several sizes smaller …’
Her mother hurls herself on to her back. ‘JESUS CHRIST!’ she hollers. ‘IS THIS WHAT I’M TO BE REDUCED TO?’
‘Shhh!’
Valentine glances over towards the door. Her mother clenches both hands into fists and boffs them, repeatedly, against the counterpane.
‘I’d go to the shops, Mum,’ Valentine struggles to mollify her, ‘but Nessa’s in bed and –’
‘THEN ASK A FUCKING NEIGHBOUR!’ her mother bellows.
Valentine closes her eyes and draws a deep breath. ‘Why don’t we try some of those breathing exercises you learned at the day centre the other day?’ she suggests, her voice artificially bright. ‘Or I can fetch you your crochet …’
Hostile silence.
‘I can’t ask a neighbour, Mum. It’s way after twelve …’ She pauses, grimacing. ‘And anyway, the doctor –’
‘Ah-ha! ’
Her mother sits bolt upright again. She has a victorious look on her face.
‘Maintenant nous arrivons au coeur de la question!’
‘He just thinks it’s advisable for you to try and lay off …’
‘Number one’ – her mother lifts a single, accusing digit – ‘you’re too damn scared to go out on your own, Nessa or no Nessa. Number blue’ – she lifts a second finger – ‘you’ve swapped the live batteries with dead ones – on the doctor’s instructions – simply to spite me and stop me from having a bit of fun. Number tree’ – she lifts a third finger – ‘I’m a gorgeous, healthy –’
‘… because this thing is much too hard,’ Valentine interrupts her, ‘and you’re rubbing yourself raw with it.’
The Yips Page 2