‘There isn’t any wall,’ Gene snaps.
‘Then I’m sorry if I unwittingly served a tiny ball of truth over the sagging but dependable net of lies that is your marriage,’ she neatly modifies.
‘I always intended to tell her,’ Gene murmurs, palpably wrong-sided. ‘It was simply a question of finding the right –’
‘It’s entirely up to you what you choose to keep from your wife,’ Jen announces, blithely.
‘She takes things so much to heart.’ Gene’s suddenly almost emotional. ‘She always blames herself …’
‘Aw. She’s very sensitive.’
Jen sticks out her lower lip.
‘Yeah. She is.’ Gene falters, feeling inexplicably stupid.
‘If I can change the subject for just one second,’ Jen rapidly interjects, stepping back and appraising him, appreciatively, from top to toe, ‘d’you have any idea how incredibly hot you look in that uniform?’
Gene’s initially surprised, then embarrassed, then nonplussed by this declaration.
‘I mean Raylon’s such an awful, non-breathable fabric, don’t you reckon?’ she twinkles, tweaking his collar as she saunters past him. Then, as she exits his office, ‘Is it only me,’ she sighs, glancing winsomely over her shoulder, fanning her face with her hand and winking, saucily, ‘or has your central heating just gone haywire?’
‘Spice?’
Stuart Ransom cocks a mildly jaundiced eyebrow. He and two other men are sitting at a table in the golf club’s second-best restaurant (caps off, no tie) having just shared a sumptuous breakfast together. It is almost ten o’clock.
‘Yeah, spice,’ the first man – gawky, skinny, bespectacled, pale yet heavily freckled, wearing baggy, brown cords and a lightly checked, brushed cotton shirt with the buttons fastened right up to the collar – tentatively expands, ‘it’s an anagram. S.P.I.C.E. Each letter represents a different concept.’
‘Not an anagram, you fool!’ Esther brusquely interjects from a nearby table (speaking through a mouthful of her third pain au chocolat). ‘It an acronym. You never done a crossword before? Lord! What they teaching you people at school these days?’
At Esther’s intervention, the skinny man – who is twenty-five years old and whose name is Toby Whittaker – blushes right down to the roots of his hair.
‘Fuck me, Esther,’ Ransom snaps, exasperated, ‘either join us or butt out, will ya?’
Esther promptly returns to her puzzle book.
The second man – older, heavy-set, blond, charming, expansive, slightly degenerate – chuckles under his breath. ‘Don’t you just love her?’ he murmurs, eyeing Esther, appreciatively.
‘Love her? Oh yeah. Like a dose of the bloody clap,’ Ransom rejoins.
‘S stands for simplicity,’ Toby continues, somewhat haltingly.
‘Well ya certainly know all about that …’ Esther grumbles (sotto voce, but still clear as a bell over the clatter of cutlery and the ceiling fans). She places down her puzzle book and commences checking the messages on her phone. ‘James Ray just message me,’ she calls over. ‘He want forty-four per cent an’ a first-class flight from Dublin on top …’
‘Forty-four per cent?!’ Ransom’s agog. ‘Just for humping my bag around like some glorified friggin’ hod carrier? Has the world finally gone mad?!’
‘You got a better idea?’ Esther demands (rotating her head – with the full complement of Jamaican sass – like some kind of enraged cobra).
‘I do, as a matter of fact.’ Ransom glowers back.
‘Yeah?’
A difficult silence follows.
‘Are we talking mind-control techniques, here?’ The blond man – a journalist called Terence Nimrod – tries to jolly things along.
‘Uh, no. More like methods of persuasion,’ Toby explains (still pink from Esther’s earlier insult), ‘tools of persuasion.’
‘Gotcha.’ Terence Nimrod picks up his coffee cup, notices that it’s empty, then puts it down again, slightly deflated.
‘Sorry, Tobe old boy’ – Ransom inspects his own cup (still half full) – ‘but whose bullshit idea did you say this was again?’
‘There you’ve got me.’ Toby looks abashed. ‘I heard him on the radio while I was driving down, but I didn’t quite catch –’
‘You passed your test! Hallelujah!’ Ransom proffers a high-five.
‘I got a lift.’ Toby pulls his collar away from his throat with a nervous finger. ‘My mother drove me. She has an old college pal in Dunstable …’
‘Don’t you find brushed cotton a little warm during the summer months?’ Nimrod queries.
‘I love brushed cotton.’ Ransom lowers his hand, his expression wistful. ‘My grandmother always had brushed cotton sheets on the beds when I was a kid …’
‘S for sincerity, was it?’ Nimrod rapidly changes tack (keen to forestall one of the golfer’s interminable childhood reminiscences).
‘Simplicity,’ Toby gently corrects him. ‘In order to persuade people in an effective way, your ideas need to be really simple, straightforward and easy to grasp …’
‘No one ever bothered asking Attila the Hun for his exam certificates,’ Ransom smirks.
Toby opens his mouth and then closes it again.
‘Yeah. I hear old Attila could be very persuasive on his day,’ Terence Nimrod deadpans.
‘A phenomenal diarist, by all accounts,’ Toby chips in.
‘Diaries?’ Ransom idly fingers the cover of the copy of Bruce Lee’s Artist of Life (which is sitting on the table alongside his placemat). ‘I bet those babies’d be worth a quick squizz …’
He reaches for the pencil resting on top of Nimrod’s trusty notebook, grabs it, scribbles something on to a paper serviette, folds it up and places it into the top pocket of his shirt.
‘S for simplicity, then,’ Toby quickly reiterates (a somewhat stricken expression on his face – although the note on Ransom’s napkin merely says ‘Lamisil Once’), ‘followed by P which stands for perceived self-interest …’
‘Not actual self-interest?’ Nimrod’s momentarily engaged.
‘Uh, no.’ Toby shakes his head. ‘I don’t suppose it really matters why you’re persuading someone – what your motivation is – so long as you’re doing it effectively. There’s nothing explicitly moral about this technique …’
‘Nobody ever made a million from selling people anything they actually need,’ Ransom muses (ever the cynic).
‘Aspirin,’ Esther pipes up from her adjacent table (a line of cappuccino foam on her upper lip).
‘Ballpoint pen,’ Nimrod expands.
‘Peer pressure plays an important role,’ Toby steps in. ‘I mean you’re more likely to be able to persuade people of something if they see that their peers have already been convinced.’
‘Think the Rwandan genocide,’ Nimrod solemnly opines (trying to raise the conversational bar).
‘Think Diet Coke,’ Ransom counters (automatically lowering it).
‘The I is quite an interesting one …’ Toby struggles manfully on.
‘Is that a new edition?’ Nimrod jabs a plump finger at Ransom’s copy of Artist of Life. ‘I read it years ago. From what I can recollect, the poetry’s pretty torrid …’
‘I’ve a signed first edition at my house in LA,’ Ransom promptly fibs. ‘Lee’s thoughts on “plasticity” struck a real chord with me. This industry’s always been chock-a-block with cock-suckers and phonies …’
Nimrod grabs the book and quickly flips through it. ‘Just promise me you’re not embarking on another of your interminable Eastern phases,’ he pleads, ‘the raw fish diet, the atrocious headbands, the enigmatic press releases …’ He rolls his eyes. ‘How’s a hardworking hack ever meant to scrape together any decent copy from that?’
‘Now I come to think about it,’ Ransom ruminates (apparently oblivious to Nimrod’s pleas), ‘I suppose martial arts might easily fall into the “Individual Sports” category …’ He glances up, visibly jarred by the no
tion. ‘D’you reckon martial arts are selfish, Tel?’
‘Selfish?’ Toby echoes, bemused.
‘All arts are selfish.’ Nimrod throws the book back down again. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Jesus was a humanitarian, not a watercolourist.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Ransom persists, ‘I read something pretty deep in there last night – pretty amazing – along the lines of’ – he clears his throat and simulates a reverential mien – ‘“Without the black sky there would be no stars, and without the little stars we would have nothing to compare the big ones by …”’
Nimrod listens to Ransom’s cod philosophizing with a measure of forbearance, then turns towards Toby with a conspiratorial wink. ‘It’s all downhill from here, Tobe,’ he murmurs. ‘Next thing we know he’ll be quoting gnomic chunks of unintelligible bullshit at us from The Art of War – like Paul Robinson on Neighbours.’
Ransom grabs the book back, infuriated (his flush truly busted). ‘I was given it by a fan if you must know,’ he growls, ‘just some stupid kid. I was telling him about my brief correspondence with Linda Lee Cadwell –’
‘Correspondence?’ Esther glances up from her novel with a snort. ‘You was legally oblige to send the poor woman a letter of apology after you get chuck out of a book-signing, drunk.’
Ransom glares at her, darkly.
‘I studied Wing Chun for almost fifteen years,’ Nimrod shares.
‘Fifteen years?!’ Toby rocks back in his chair. ‘Are you serious?!’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Nimrod asks (faux-offended).
‘No reason,’ Toby flounders. ‘I just …’ He clears his throat. ‘I just didn’t have you down as a big martial arts fan, that’s all.’
‘So what did you have me down as?’ Nimrod wonders.
‘A big fat old lard-arse, that’s what!’ Ransom sniggers, nudging Nimrod in the ribs and then picking up his coffee cup to take a sip.
‘I am generously proportioned’ – Nimrod fondly pats his significant girth – ‘principally because I wrecked my knee in competition. But I was a force to be reckoned with in my day. Spent eighteen months in Japan on a scholarship studying with the best: a former pupil of the Yip Man, no less.’
On the word ‘yip’, Ransom’s hand suddenly goes into spasm, spilling coffee on to the tablecloth. He curses under his breath.
‘The Yip Man?’ Toby echoes, intrigued, helping to blot up the spill with a couple of stray napkins.
‘Professor Yip Man to the likes of you,’ Nimrod teases him. ‘Bruce Lee’s old Master …’ He reaches towards the book. ‘There’s probably a photograph …’
Ransom struggles to return his cup to its saucer as Nimrod opens the book and starts paging through it.
‘Talking of the yips …’ Toby observes, directing a significant look towards Ransom’s cack-handed manoeuvrings.
‘It’s a trapped nerve,’ Ransom quickly brushes him off, rotating his shoulder. ‘I fucked it up yesterday jump-starting this old Hummer …’
‘Here we go.’ Nimrod finds what he’s looking for. ‘Page fifteen.’
The caption under the photo reads: ‘Bruce Lee (right) and his only formal martial arts instructor, Yip Man.’
Both men inspect the photo for a second, impressed by Yip Man’s look of serene austerity.
‘Bruce Lee.’ Nimrod chuckles, pointing.
‘Some random nine-hole fan I was chatting to online the other day was telling me how there’s this entire site dedicated to the condition on the net,’ Toby volunteers. ‘It’s got a warning sign that flashes up discouraging people from reading the contents unless they’re already a sufferer. Apparently the human mind is so suggestible, so fragile – so … well, persuadable – that if you even try and engage with the yips on a purely intellectual level then you’re much more likely to fall victim to it.’
‘It’s a trapped nerve, Tobe,’ Ransom repeats.
‘You’re still using the belly putter, though?’ Toby persists.
‘So what if I am?’ Ransom’s starting to bridle. ‘If it’s good enough for Sergio …’
Esther glances up from her puzzle book.
‘An old Hummer, eh?’ Nimrod neatly interjects, with a grin. ‘Takes me back to the glory days …’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’ Toby finally detects the sudden atmosphere. ‘Well, I guess it’s just a question of mind over matter …’
Ransom grimaces. His hand is hidden from view, shoved firmly into his pocket under the table.
‘… and now that you’ve finally managed to put that nasty case of shingles behind you –’ Toby expands.
‘Glandular fever,’ Ransom curtly corrects him.
‘My youngest daughter had it,’ Nimrod sighs. ‘Completely destroyed her GCSE year …’
‘I met this guy the other day who survived terminal cancer.’ Ransom’s keen to change the subject. ‘Not just once or twice, but on seven separate occasions.’
‘But if the condition was terminal …’ Toby’s frowning. ‘I mean isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’
‘Seven times?’ Nimrod’s intrigued. ‘How the hell’d he manage that?’
‘Uh …’ Ransom’s stuck for an answer. ‘Force of will,’ he eventually suggests.
‘That’s phenomenal.’ Nimrod’s visibly moved. ‘What type of cancer?’
‘I dunno. Every type. All types. Take your pick.’ Ransom shrugs. ‘He came from a family of fortune-tellers …’
‘Witches?’ Nimrod’s reaching for his notebook. ‘Was there a black magic element to the story?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. They were palm-readers. He’s related to some famous palm-reader – Cheerie … Charley … I don’t remember the name, off-hand …’
‘Cheiro,’ Toby suggests.
‘Got it in one!’ Ransom’s impressed.
‘Cheiro’s a legend.’ Toby shrugs.
‘Well this guy was apparently born without a lifeline.’ Ransom struggles to remember the basic details. ‘The cards were totally stacked against him. I mean it was pretty much predestined that he would die from the outset. Everybody thought so. But he didn’t. He conquered it and he survived it – time and time again. He blew a huge, wet raspberry in the face of Destiny.’
‘Lord give me strength!’ Esther snorts (she’s put aside the puzzle book). ‘The man taken you for a damn fool, Stu!’
Ransom considers his response for a second. ‘Nah’ – he shakes his head – ‘it wasn’t like that. He had a kind of …’ He frowns, plainly conflicted (as if battling with the prospect of even pronouncing the word out loud). ‘… a kind of quiet integrity. Very modest and unassuming. Looks a little like Tom Watson …’
‘How old?’ Nimrod demands.
‘Mid-thirties, but very old-fashioned. Has this … this timeless quality about him. Remember those kids at school who were raised by their grandparents? Clean tank top? Lightly greased-back hair? Nicely polished shoes?’
‘Does he still read palms?’ Toby interrupts.
‘Not sure. Yeah. Maybe.’
‘D’you think he’d consider doing it professionally?’ Nimrod follows up. ‘For a tabloid?’
‘But the cancer’s not even the half of it.’ Ransom returns to the story (which is coming back to him, now, in neat, bite-size chunks). ‘After it went into remission for a while – and he finally thought the whole, shitty ordeal was over with – he was involved in a serious car smash. Not his fault – his aunt or someone was driving. Everybody died except him. Oh, and his niece, Mallory, who he adopted. Her whole face was torn apart – her jaw shattered, her tongue bitten half off. His legs were totally mashed. He had to have them pinned back together again. He was stuck in a wheelchair. It was years before he could walk. But now he competes in all these triathlons to raise money so’s he can take the kid to America for groundbreaking plastic surgery …’
‘Where’d you find this guy?’ Toby’s awestruck. ‘Does he write a blog?’
‘What’s his name?’ Nimrod adds. ‘D’you have his n
umber?’
‘We got chatting in a bar.’ Ransom shrugs. ‘I stayed over at his house the other night. He’s a massive fan. Said he’d taken huge amounts of inspiration from my career over the years …’
‘There we are!’ Esther snorts.
‘Sorry?’ Ransom glares over at her.
‘If the man takin’ inspiration from your career, he plainly delusional!’
‘Or just his email address …’ Nimrod persists.
‘Delusional?’ Ransom echoes. ‘Fuck you!’
‘I’m fascinated by palm-reading,’ Toby muses. ‘I’d love to get my palm read by a real professional. Find out if nine-hole’s got a future – whether Turbo Golf’s actually a goer. God knows I could do with the encouragement as things stand …’
‘If he got him no lifeline and he still survive,’ Esther reasons, ‘just think about it: a lifeline don’t mean shit! Either way, the man a sure-fire liar.’
Toby scowls, confused.
‘By your way of thinking, Esther,’ Nimrod interjects, ‘if I always drive at fifty on a road with a thirty limit, then ergo, the road doesn’t actually exist.’
‘Crazy logic!’ Esther snorts.
Nimrod turns to Ransom. ‘Is this guy local by any chance?’
‘What’s with you and the fucking attitude?!’ Ransom suddenly confronts Esther across the tables. ‘You’re Stuart Ransom’s manager for Christsakes! Start acting like it!’
‘Watch your mouth!’ Esther is trenchant.
‘I’d blame it on the hormones if you weren’t always such a friggin’ bitch,’ Ransom mutters.
‘You want hormones …?’ Esther growls.
Ransom turns to Toby. ‘I call her the Black Widow,’ he confides.
Toby smiles, agonized, not daring to respond.
‘This is her third bub on my watch an’ I’ve never yet shaken hands with a dad.’ Ransom shrugs. ‘I think she kills the poor bastards and eats ’em.’
‘Go to hell!’ Esther hisses.
Toby looks mortified.
‘Here’s an interesting fact for you.’ Ransom seems enlivened – even cheered – by the horribly strained atmosphere he’s engineered. ‘Did you know that we inherited our aggressive impulses from our spider ancestors?’
The Yips Page 15