The Yips

by Barker, Nicola

  ‘Thou shalt not be constipated,’ Gene murmurs.

  ‘Is it fresh ginger in that mule of yours?’ Ransom turns back to the waitress. ‘Or is it that filthy, condensed sugar-syrupy crap?’

  ‘I think it’ll be fresh, but I’m not one hundred per cent sure,’ the waitress confesses.

  ‘Well if you don’t know, then how about you toddle off and ask someone who does?’ Ransom suggests.

  ‘The smoothies sound delicious,’ Gene steps in, diplomatically. ‘Why not try a smoothie?’

  ‘I don’t want a smoothie,’ Ransom informs him, indignant. ‘I’m having a double Scotch. The mule’s for you.’

  ‘But I already ordered a lemonade …’

  ‘Great – a lemonade and a double Scotch.’ The waitress quickly scribbles down the order and then scoots off, expertly sidestepping Toby Whittaker as she goes.

  Toby is holding a half-pint of brown ale as he approaches.

  ‘You won’t believe this …’ he exclaims, carefully steadying the glass in the wake of the speedy waitress.

  ‘Try me,’ Ransom harrumphs, already bored.

  Toby places his glass on to the table, pulls out a chair and sits down, uninvited (much to Ransom’s evident irritation). ‘So I asked for a half of brown at lunch and the barman says they don’t stock it. I’m consequently obliged to neck a glass of draught Guinness instead …’

  Ransom yawns, majestically.

  ‘Anyway, I head to the bar this evening, ask for a bottle of lager and the barman – different barman – says, “We’re also offering brown ale, sir,” and suggests two varieties, both organic!’

  ‘Incredible!’ Ransom expostulates, sarcastically.

  ‘This place is amazing!’ Toby continues, seemingly undaunted. ‘Beautifully designed, state-of-the-art facilities, stupidly luxurious, attentive staff – nothing’s too much trouble. They even have a twenty-four-hour concierge service. I mean we’re on the outskirts of Luton, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I hate to bust your bubble,’ Gene gently informs him, ‘but I think you’ll probably find that you can order a half of brown in most reputable establishments around here without too much trouble – and a few not so reputable, come to that. We’re only forty-five minutes from London, after all.’

  ‘Who drinks brown ale anyway?’ Ransom snorts. ‘Old men and dick-heads, that’s who.’

  ‘Your regiment’s stationed locally?’ Toby surmises, his eyes resting, somewhat quizzically, on Gene’s casual clothes and military cap.

  ‘Lesbians and cyber-punks,’ Ransom mutters, darkly, ‘and people at sheep dog trials. And scientists. And Morris Men. And student friggin’ engineers …’

  ‘Uh, no,’ Gene puts his hand to his head, embarrassed.

  ‘This is Gino,’ Ransom interjects, ‘my new caddie.’

  ‘Gene,’ Gene corrects him, removing the cap and placing it down on to the table, ‘and I haven’t formally –’

  ‘Toby’s my “ideas man”,’ Ransom interrupts again.

  ‘I’m a Sports Strategist,’ Toby expands. ‘I’m into futures. You should visit my blog.’

  ‘Toby’s the guy behind Turbo Golf.’ Ransom grins. ‘He’s campaigning to reduce the standard game to nine holes.’

  ‘It’s simply a question of convincing the professionals,’ Toby explains. ‘Ransom’s fairly progressive by golfing standards, but the rest are a depressingly traditional bunch.’

  ‘If it ain’t broke why fix it?’ Ransom shrugs.

  ‘I mean who really has the time for an eighteen-hole game in this day and age?’ Toby persists. ‘If your average game was nine holes it’d totally transform the sport on countless levels. It’d democratize it for a start. It’d dramatically reduce the average age of the golfing demographic. It’d halve waiting times on popular courses. And think of the environmental benefits! I’m basically re-thinking golf for a new, techno-savvy generation. I’ve invented several variations on the game: Punk Golf, Target Golf … They basically turn the traditional game inside out. You can play Target Golf by downloading a special program on to your phone. It sounds really high-tech, but it’s actually –’

  ‘Let’s not bore Gino to death with all of that,’ Ransom groans.

  ‘I’m not remotely bored,’ Gene maintains.

  ‘Well I am,’ Ransom grumbles, ‘so if it’s … oh bollocks!’

  He suddenly slips down in his chair.

  Toby automatically snaps to attention. He scans the bar and rapidly locates the problem: ‘Twenty to four and approaching,’ he mutters. ‘Pushy Dad with kid in tow.’

  Ransom turns to Gene, panicked. ‘Start talking about something important,’ he hisses, ‘quick!’

  ‘Uh …’ Gene’s caught on the hop.

  ‘Go on,’ he prompts him, ‘tell Toby about your preacher wife – or your car accident – or your cancer.’

  ‘What?’ Gene’s disconcerted.

  ‘Gino here had terminal cancer over seven times but he cured himself with crystals,’ Ransom helpfully informs Toby.

  ‘I had terminal cancer once,’ Gene corrects him, irritated, ‘and I’ve never knowingly used –’

  ‘Only the once?!’ Ransom’s appalled. ‘But that skanky little blonde barmaid at the Thistle –’

  ‘I’ve had cancer eight times, in total, but only once was it terminal. The other times it was just …’ – Gene shrugs, determined to underplay it – ‘just your standard small lumps and inflamed moles and stuff.’

  ‘Hang on a sec!’ Toby suddenly pipes up, excited. ‘So you’re the man with no lifeline? The son of Cheiro? But that’s incredible! Why the hell didn’t you mention it in the first place?’

  He springs to his feet and proffers Gene his hand.

  ‘I’m not Cheiro’s son.’ Gene shakes Toby’s hand, somewhat overwhelmed. ‘And Jen isn’t skanky,’ he adds, as an afterthought, glancing sideways at Ransom, ‘just a little bit wayward, sometimes …’

  As he speaks, the Wolf and his father draw closer to the table.

  ‘So whereabouts in your body was this cancer?’ Ransom butts in (ignoring the Jen reprimand). ‘The brain? The foot? In one, main area or spread all over the shop?’

  ‘Uh …’ Gene pauses before he musters up an answer (patently startled – even disarmed – by the golfer’s direct approach). ‘Well it actually started off in the breast,’ he confesses, his right hand automatically drifting to the area just below his left nipple, ‘and then there was a problem with the throat …’

  His hand moves to the base of his throat, near the collar bone. ‘Then a tumour in one of the lymph glands under my left armpit – that was the really bad one …’

  His hand moves to his armpit. ‘It spread down to my stomach … uh …’

  He briefly loses focus, glancing down at himself, frowning, before quickly retracing the short series of movements for a second time:

  Breast, throat, armpit, stomach …

  – then a third –

  Breast, throat …

  The Wolf and his father are now standing next to the table.

  ‘I just wanted to take this opportunity to say another, quick thank you for helping us out this afternoon …’

  The Wolf’s father takes full advantage of the brief lull in their conversation.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Ransom pooh-poohs him, suddenly all smiles. ‘You’ve got nothing to thank me for! What I did was pure instinct! A natural reflex! It wasn’t remotely grand or brave or heroic …’

  ‘What did you do?’ Toby demands, intrigued.

  ‘He saved our bacon, that’s what!’ the Wolf’s father exclaims. ‘He’s a miracle worker! A Godsend! I’m Brendan Dick, by the way, and this is my very lucky, very grateful, very gifted son, Alfie, aka Little Dickie, aka the Dickster, aka the Wolf.’

  The Wolf bays, to order (much to the evident dismay of the waitress, who is returning to the table with Ransom’s drinks order).

  ‘In fact while we’re here I wondered whether we might just take
this opportunity to bend your ear about the kids’ comp. Alfie’s not had the chance to play the course before –’

  ‘That’s a very tempting offer,’ Ransom interrupts, gratefully snatching his Scotch from the waitress’s tray and knocking back a quick mouthful, ‘and under normal circumstances I’d like nothing better, but this gentleman here was just filling me in on some rather painful and sensitive details about his lifelong battle with cancer.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The Wolf’s father’s eyes turn to Gene, his expression an odd combination of irritation, pity and fear. The Wolf steps behind his father as if seeking shelter.

  ‘Don’t worry’ – Gene smiles at the child – ‘it’s not contagious.’

  ‘Not so far as we’re aware.’ Ransom shrugs, widening his eyes at the cowering Wolf, somewhat mischievously.

  ‘Well maybe later, eh?’ The Wolf’s father turns to leave, somewhat deflated.

  ‘Just by the by …’ Ransom stops him in his tracks. ‘You didn’t happen to see a big, blond bugger in the foyer on your way through to the bar? Burgundy waistcoat? Huge fat white hands? Sweating like a rapist? Crouched over a laptop?’

  ‘Uh …’ The Wolf’s father ponders this for a second. ‘That description does ring a small bell, now you come to mention it.’

  ‘Thought as much.’ Ransom nods appreciatively, turning to Gene. ‘Terence Nimrod,’ he informs him, conversationally, ‘the journalist. I was pretty sure I spotted him out there earlier.’

  The Wolf’s father prepares to leave again.

  ‘Now I come to think of it …’ Ransom stops him for a second time. ‘I don’t suppose it could do you any harm to wander over and get yourself officially acquainted. Throw my name into the mix if you think it’ll help. Offer to buy him a drink. Keep him up to speed on any recent developments in the kid’s game.’

  ‘That’s not a half-bad idea!’ The Wolf’s father’s suddenly beaming.

  ‘Happy to be of service!’ Ransom cheerfully rejoins, then turns straight back to Gene again. ‘So this cancer of yours,’ he mutters, grabbing a large cube of ice from his whisky glass, popping it into his mouth and crunching it – with a spine-tingling recklessness – between his molars. ‘Did it fetch up in yer knackers, or what?’

  * * *

  There’s no room in the garage for a car. It’s full of bikes and filing cabinets and old tyres and rusty swing sets and stacks and stacks of over-filled boxes. Sheila has lifted several of these from the pile and is halfway through emptying out the first of them which has The Rag, 1996 written on its side (circled, twice) in a heavy, black marker pen.

  Sheila sits cross-legged on the dusty, concrete floor, relying on the last of the natural light – which filters in through the open garage door, tinged with a gentle, ethereal pink – as she squints down at an open poetry book:

  ‘Maybe I have plugged up my sockets

  to keep the gods in?’ she reads.

  ‘Maybe, although my heart

  is a kitten of butter,

  I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.’

  She closes her eyes for a second, smiling, the skin on her arms goose-bumping, her nostrils flaring, revelling in the feeling of pure, undiluted pleasure these few, simple lines afford her. When she opens her eyes again, she unexpectedly catches her reflection in a nearby hubcap. Her face is joyous – illuminated. A rosy nimbus surrounds her head like a foggy halo of mustard gas.

  She gazes at herself for a fleeting moment, shocked, then quickly turns away, slaps the book shut and tosses it (almost guiltily) back into the box. Three seconds pass before she is carefully retrieving it, straightening the dust jacket, lifting her black shirt and shoving it, furtively, into the waistband of her trousers (quickly yanking her priestly raiment back into place again).

  She now pushes the first box aside and delves into the one that sits directly to its left (written across the lid – in heavy, blue marker this time – is ODDS AND SODS). From the top of it she withdraws an old altar cloth (partially destroyed by moths) and a folded-up child’s duvet cover with matching pillow in the design of a racing car. Under these are four cuddly toys: a bear without a head, a felt elephant with its ears partially chewed off, a somersaulting dog with the springs dangling from its battery compartment and a duck.

  Under the toys are two plastic bags, one containing Stickle Bricks, the other, Lego and part of a small train track. Next she withdraws three books. The first two (one is Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, the other an old, obtuse-seeming hardback called Synonyms Discriminated) she hurriedly puts to one side, the third she inspects the cover of and then clucks her satisfaction at the title before resting her back against a large, empty Calor Gas bottle and starting to page through it.

  She pauses at the beginning of Chapter Three, her eye momentarily distracted by something: a tiny silver sequin, squeezed by the urgent push of alternating pages into the book’s yellowing spine. She pulls it out, inspects it for a second, then drops it, carelessly, into her lap.

  Her eye focuses on the chapter’s opening paragraph: ‘Behind the layers of ambiguity and dissonance the agoraphobic longs for meaningful and rewarding involvement in the outside world. This may mean that there were lapses and breaches in her early feminine training that make it difficult for her to accept the renunciations usually accepted by women …’

  As she reads, she slowly becomes aware of a slight commotion outside. She lifts her head and listens, scowling, gradually discerning the soft purr of an engine idling in neutral, the occasional clank of metal against railings interspersed by snatches of conversation and the jarring blurt of music from a phone.

  She flares her nostrils, irritated, and returns to her book again, turning back a few pages, her eye settling on a paragraph that has been underlined in soft, dark pencil by the book’s previous owner: ‘Although she did succeed in masking it, underneath she was seething with rage at the injustice done to her. It was the emergence of these feelings that she feared in subsequent social situations, as well as the fear of more injury, that turned her into a recluse …’

  The engine – having idled temporarily – now roars back into life, brakes squeal and then the engine idles once again to accompanying laughter.

  ‘The most dangerous place for women,’ she reads, ‘is in their own homes. One cannot read a newspaper without realizing the dangers of the street, yet social scientists have known for years what the public resists: the greatest danger is from “loved ones” and others whom we know …’

  More engine noise, high-pitched female giggling, then (and this is the deal-breaker) the sound of breaking glass. Sheila springs to her feet and charges outside. She belts across the back garden, jinks through a specially engineered tear in the fence, expertly sidesteps a hodge-podge of small graves and ends up hard against the black, wrought-iron fence that shelters the churchyard from the road beyond.

  As she draws to a sharp halt, the poetry book – currently having slipped down to thigh-level – travels still further down her trouser leg, resting, momentarily, at her knee.

  Three Asian boys and one girl appraise her, quizzically.

  ‘Sorry to be a party-pooper,’ Sheila huffs, observing a broken cider bottle on the pavement while bending down and feeling for the book, ‘but I’m afraid the fun stops here.’

  The quizzical appraisal continues, then one of the boys – the one standing on the pavement with the girl (the other two are in the car; an old, brown Honda with gold hubcaps and darkened windows) – smirks, dismissively, ‘We weren’t having no fun, missus …’

  He turns to the girl. ‘Was you havin’ any fun?’ he enquires, cordially.

  ‘Nope,’ the girl says, shrugging.

  ‘You sure about that?’ the boy in the passenger seat asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she confirms. ‘It’s been total crap. One of the crappiest ever, in actual fact.’

  ‘That bad?!’ The first boy looks slightly put out.

  ‘On my mother’s life!’ She nods.
r />   ‘Her mother’s a zombie!’ the kid in the passenger seat guffaws.

  ‘No she ain’t!’ the girl squeals, shrilly.

  ‘Her mother’s Freddie Kruger!’ the passenger kid rejoins, then a series of baroque, Freddie Kruger impressions are enacted while the lone girl bleats her protest.

  Sheila has a momentary inkling that she might be in imminent danger of losing her moral authority (if, indeed, she had any to begin with), so she does the first thing that enters her head – she starts singing.

  ‘Once in Royal David’s city

  Stood a lowly cattle shed,

  Where a mother laid her baby

  In a cradle for its bed …’

  Sheila does not have an especially good singing voice, but it is strong – some might even call it ‘strident’. The kids stop their zombie impressions and turn to appraise her again, surprised.

  ‘Mary was that mother, mild,’ Sheila sings, undaunted,

  ‘Jesus Christ her little child.’

  As she quickly inhales between verses, the kids exchange glances.

  ‘That definitely ain’t no recording voice,’ the first boy mutters.

  ‘Are yous a nun?’ the girl asks.

  ‘A nun?’ Sheila echoes. ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m actually …’ She falters for a second, then smiles. ‘I’m a guard dog.’

  She points to the church: ‘My kennel.’ She grins.

  ‘You’re weird,’ the kid in the passenger seat mutters.

  ‘Woof!’ Sheila says, nodding.

  ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’ the first boy demands (Sheila keeps reaching her hand down towards her knee to try and dislodge the book).

  ‘Woof!’ Sheila answers, shaking her leg so that the book falls out from the bottom of her trousers. She bends over to pick it up then holds it out to her audience. ‘Woof! Woof! Woof-woof woof, Woof woof!’ she explains (‘It’s a poetry book, stupid!’ in canine-lingo).