‘I don’t know why they persist in putting these things on me,’ she says, pulling it off, ‘it’s so strange n’est-ce pas? Si honteuse! So unnecessary!’
She holds it out to him, indignant. ‘Look!’ she says. ‘A nappy!’
‘Yes. Yes, I see …’ Gene murmurs, nodding, and then (for want of anything more pertinent to add), ‘I’m sorry.’
‘My dear, dear friend,’ she sighs, eyes raised, melodramatic, ‘this is not the life I was intended for!’
‘No,’ Gene concedes, with a wry grimace, ‘I feel that way myself, sometimes …’
She drops the nappy to the floor.
‘What life were you intended for?’ she asks, undermining this question – while she speaks – with a flutter of extraordinary hand movements that seem to relate on no discernible level to the enquiry she’s just made.
Gene ponders his answer for a while.
‘I always wanted to be a cricketer,’ he eventually confesses, ‘or a pilot, maybe, with the RAF –’
‘I always wanted to be a dancer,’ she interrupts, ‘a beautiful ballerina.’
She commences twirling around the room, her balance shot, her arms still chronically restricted by the dressing gown.
Gene takes out his phone and rings Valentine’s mobile. She answers immediately.
‘Where are you?’ he asks, at a whisper.
‘Where are you?’ she asks, also at a whisper.
‘In your house,’ he says. ‘The sitting room. I’m with your mother. She’s dancing.’
‘Shit …’
He hears the gentle creak of bed springs. ‘You got here sooner than I thought. I’m upstairs with Nessa. She had a stomach-ache. She couldn’t sleep. Just hold on a second …’
She hangs up.
Valentine’s mother stops dancing, slightly out of breath, then squats down on the carpet and prepares to urinate.
‘Your mother’s urinating on the rugs,’ Gene mutters (still into his phone – although he knows she won’t hear him). ‘What should I do?’
As he speaks he hears the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs. He stands up (wincing, half-indicating, almost apologetic) as Valentine staggers into the room, yanking on a pair of red, tracksuit bottoms. She grinds to a sudden halt on apprehending her crouching parent, then draws a deep breath, pushes back her shoulders and sets her expression.
‘Gene!’ she announces, breezily, walking towards him, smiling, holding out her hand. ‘How good of you to come!’
Gene takes her hand – her small, soft hand with its inexplicably bruised finger pads – and politely shakes it. He immediately notices that her face is clean of make-up. It’s plain and flushed. There are freckles on her nose. Her brows are thin and pale red in colour. Her eyes are pink-rimmed. She looks beautiful – natural as a rabbit – but entirely different.
‘Your mother was good enough to let me in,’ he murmurs, doing his best to play along. She doesn’t automatically release his hand. He feels a tickling sensation in his chest, like his lungs are a fledgling sparrow which she’s gently compressing in her grip.
‘I’ve been working on the design for your tattoo,’ she continues, brightly, as though reading from a bad script. ‘I do hope you’ll be pleased with the work I’ve done.’
‘Great!’
Gene nods, bemused. ‘Fantastic!’
‘So if you’ll just head through to the studio for me …’
Valentine indicates the way and finally releases him.
‘Absolutely …’
He totters towards the door, strangely light-headed (when did he last eat?), anxious – in this sudden explosion of liberty – that he might lose his bearings completely and fly into a window pane.
Valentine turns to her mother, now.
‘Time for bed, I think,’ she murmurs, bending down to retrieve the abandoned nappy.
Her mother stands up.
‘I couldn’t go,’ she mutters, piqued. ‘I pushed and pushed, but nothing! Pas une goutte d’urine!’
‘You already went, remember? Ten minutes ago? Upstairs. In the bathroom.’
Gene hears their conversation as he walks down the corridor. He reaches the door of the studio and tries the handle. It doesn’t give. The door is locked. He tries it again. It remains locked.
‘I was dancing!’
Valentine’s mother performs a small pirouette.
‘That’s lovely.’ Valentine nods. ‘I see you’ve got your dressing gown on back to front …’
‘Have I?’
Her mother peers down at herself.
‘Yes. Shall we take it off and then head up to bed?’
Her mother neglects to answer. She’s just caught her own, distorted reflection in one of the room’s several, antique, fish-eye-lens mirrors.
‘Your father collected those.’ She points, grimacing. ‘Si vilains! I always hated the damn things. So unflattering!’
Valentine’s tired, bare face breaks into an unexpected smile.
‘The mirrors!’ she coos. ‘Well done! We should write that down in your book …’ She grabs her mother’s arm and pats it, delighted. ‘First thing in the morning, just as soon as you wake up, we’ll write it down together.’
‘What?’
Her mother frowns, snatching her arm away, confused.
‘Dad’s mirrors,’ Valentine persists. ‘He collected round mirrors. You never liked them – you thought they were unflattering. We should write it down in your Memory book.’
Her mother says nothing for a few seconds, just gazes at her, aghast, and then, ‘Poor creature!’ she murmurs. ‘You poor, deluded, foolish creature with your … your Memory books and your ugly mirrors and your hairy cats and your remote controls!’
She shakes her head, appalled. ‘Always living in the past! Si tendue! C’est une plaisanterie! Always harking back! This terrible prison of … of regret.’
She throws up her hands, despairing. ‘How long must I live in this place? Eh? Gnawing on the hollow husk of this other woman’s life? Stuck in her shabby home with her ignorant family, wearing her ugly, stupid, shapeless clothes?’
She plucks, irritably, at her dressing gown. ‘Constantly guarded and spied on! Never free or happy or at ease! C’est tellement cruelle! It’s all so pointless! I despise you! No! Worse! I pity you!’
She grabs the nappy, hurls it to the floor, then turns on her heel and storms upstairs.
After a five-second pause, Gene reappears in the doorway. Valentine doesn’t look up. She’s staring down at the carpet.
‘The door was locked,’ he murmurs.
Her lips are moving.
‘I hate her!’ she’s whispering. ‘I hate her! I hate her! I hate her so much – so much – and then I hate myself for hating her. Oh God, she’s right! It is a terrible life! I hate it, too: the house – the drudgery – the cat hair – the filth! She’s right. She’s right! It is a prison. It is ugly! It is stupid! These rugs. The sofa …’
Long pause.
Valentine focuses in on her legs. She grimaces at the red, tracksuit bottoms.
‘This terrible tracksuit,’ she mutters.
Short pause.
Gene soberly inspects the tracksuit bottoms.
‘It’s a little baggy on the knee,’ he concedes.
She looks up, surprised, then looks down, then looks up again, irritably.
‘Just a little baggy,’ he repeats, with a gentle, teasing smile, ‘around the knee area.’
She looks down again. She looks up again.
‘They’re Noel’s.’ She scowls, embarrassed. ‘I yanked them on in the dark. You got here sooner than I expected.’
‘I ran.’ He shrugs.
‘Really?’ She’s momentarily diverted, even flattered.
‘How far?’
‘Not far. Less than a mile.’
Valentine inspects the tracksuit bottoms again, forlornly.
‘A bold match with the green kimono,’ Gene volunteers.
‘Screw you!’
/> She starts to smile, in spite of herself, then shakes her head and scowls.
‘I hate this!’ she groans. ‘I miss my mum. I miss her so much! I’d do anything to get her back.’
She shakes her head, appalled. ‘All those things that irritated me before … The cats, the Catholicism … everything too close, too stifling, too familiar. She drove me mad! We weren’t even especially close – I just took her for granted. Yet here I am, trying everything I can to scrape her back together again. Gathering up all these stupid, tiny little fragments … She’s right! I am a hypocrite. It is sad. It is deluded.’
‘It was always bound to take a period of adjustment.’ He struggles to defend her.
‘Oh God. I can’t breathe. I’m short of breath.’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘She does it every time. She takes my breath away. Everything’s fine. Everything’s okay, and then suddenly …’
She tries to fill her chest with air, but just gulps.
‘Whenever my daughter gets really stressed,’ Gene confides, stepping forward, ‘there’s always one, completely foolproof way of snapping her out of it.’
Valentine drops her hands and stares at him, her eyes panicked and unfocused.
‘A piggy-back,’ Gene concludes, somewhat flatly.
‘Sorry?’
Valentine frowns.
‘A piggy-back. It’s the world’s greatest stress-buster. It never fails.’
‘Hang on a second.’ Valentine still isn’t quite sure what he’s getting at. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting …?’
Gene thinks for a moment, and then, ‘Sure.’ He shrugs. ‘Why not?’
He takes off his jacket and throws it on to the sofa. Her turns his back to her and holds out his arms, glancing over his shoulder.
‘Jump on.’
Valentine just stands there.
Gene drops his arms. ‘I mean if you think you’re too old for a piggy-back …’
His tone is fond, but teasing. ‘Or too serious, or too important …’
‘Fine.’
Valentine yanks up the tracksuit bottoms, moves in close behind him, lightly rests her hands on his shoulders and prepares to jump. The first attempt is a disaster. Her jump is too low and he grabs the fabric of the tracksuit on one leg while missing the other altogether. It’s as much as she can muster not to crash, spread-eagled, to the floor.
‘Useless!’ Gene gently mocks her.
‘My tracksuit’s too baggy!’ she grumbles.
‘Really?’ Gene muses. ‘And there was me always thinking tracksuits were designed to improve flexibility.’
‘Fuck you!’
Valentine pulls off the tracksuit bottoms and throws them on to the sofa alongside his jacket. She straightens her boxer shorts to maintain levels of propriety.
‘Ready?’ she barks.
‘As I’ll ever be.’ He nods, bracing himself.
Valentine leaps. This time it’s a good jump. He deftly grabs her legs and bounces her, effortlessly, up on to his hips. He shoves his forearms under her knees. She tenses her thighs and throws her arms around his shoulders. Her hot cheek presses against his ear.
‘Giddy-up!’ she puffs, sarcastic, spurring him on with a bare foot.
Gene starts off with a few, brief circuits around the room, then veers into the hallway, turns a sharp left, heads towards the studio, performs a rapid about-turn, canters towards the front door and then back again. They repeat this trajectory several times. On their third circuit, as they draw close to the front door, Valentine kicks out a leg and points.
‘It’s so bright,’ she mutters, intrigued, ‘is it a full moon out there tonight?’
‘Uh … Yeah,’ he pants, pausing, ‘or as good as.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah,’ he repeats, nodding. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Then we should go moon chasing!’ She laughs.
‘Moon …?’
‘Didn’t you ever do it as a kid?’ She angles her head to stare at his face. ‘Get shit-faced on mushrooms or cider or skunk, then jump in a car and go moon chasing?’
‘No,’ Gene confesses, ‘can’t say that I did.’
‘Then let’s go!’
She bounces up and down, excitedly. ‘You don’t know what you’ve been missing!’
She spurs him on, impatiently, with her foot.
‘Really? Outside?’ Gene’s anxious. ‘Are you sure …?’
‘Why not? It’s late. There’ll be no one about.’
She reaches forward and unfastens the latch – her breath on his cheek – and in that brief instant she is transformed from a simple weight – a general load, a casual burden – into a complete physical entity. He feels the intimacy of his hands beneath her knees. He feels her breasts against his back. The silk of her kimono brushes his arms.
He bites his lip, stricken, wondering how on earth he has contrived to arrive at this place.
‘Mooon chasing!’ she croons, laughing.
‘What about your mother?’ he asks, daunted.
‘Just for a minute,’ she begs him. ‘It’s been so long …’
‘How long?’
‘Ten months. A year? Please. Please.’
‘But I thought …?’
‘Please …’ she wheedles, hugging him more tightly, angling her toes towards each other, ‘I feel fine when I’m with you. I can do it. I know I can. Just for a minute … one minute …’
He ducks down his head and they charge outside.
‘Mooon chasing!’ She laughs, pointing to the sky, ecstatic.
‘Which way?’ he wonders, half-registering the regretful creak of the gate behind him, then the mournful crunch of the tarmac beneath his feet. The moon hangs in front of them – huge, smug and unassailable – behind the opposite terrace of houses.
‘Number seventy-three’ – she points – ‘there’s an entryway … the place is derelict. It’s been empty for years. As kids we all thought it was haunted. There’s a gap in the fence out the back, then a line of garages …’
He follows her directions, feeling less and less confident – less distinctively himself – with every advancing step he takes.
‘Mooon chasing!’ she whoops.
They enter the passageway and are immediately immersed in a thick, cool dankness, their heightened senses cruelly assaulted by the fuzzy squeak of ripe urine, the grumbling snarl of burned plastic, the poignant whisper of mildew …
He feels her inhale, sharply, then hold her breath, her eyes squeezed shut, her arms tightening around his neck, her nose pushing – puppy-soft – against the skin behind his ear. He thrills to feel her burrow into him. He burgeons in the face of her helplessness – inflates, expands – feels effortlessly bold and brave and powerful. His skin glows and prickles with a sudden, jolting – utterly ludicrous – significance.
Five … six … seven … eight thudding seconds later and they emerge back into the light again. Gene blinks, peering around him, momentarily disorientated. They’re in a long wild garden, high-walled on either side.
The moon shines down, its gaze bold and frank and unremitting, its industrious rays carefully highlighting every edge and leaf and angle, every gland and hair and pore with delicate splashes of luminous, yellow ink. Gene feels the gentle swipe of its brush against his throat, tastes its mellow lustre against his lips.
He apprehends – with a slight shudder – that the world is at once cloaked by this exotic radiance (feathered, sheathed, obfuscated), yet also tenderly picked clean by its glinting beak. This is not a searchlight or a spotlight – not a light with which to intimidate or interrogate – and yet, in spite of that (or perhaps, even, because of it) he sees that it is a light where all that is hidden must somehow, inexorably, be revealed. He knows, in that instant (his heart singing and howling and lurching), that he will envelop Valentine in that lemon glow, and that he, in turn, will be enveloped.
Gene starts wading through the garden – like a doughty, lard-smattered, cross-Channel swimme
r entering the choppy surf – his feet far less sure now, sometimes stumbling, forging a chaotic route through a seemingly impenetrable mess of biting nettles, old bricks, broken furniture and brambles. He feels the skin on his arms being torn and stung, feels Valentine tensing her knees and feet, but she does not release her grip on him or urge him to turn back again. Her head is angled to the sky, her pale throat arching, a luminescent hummingbird thirstily imbibing the abundant lunar nectar.
He follows a thin, cracked, concrete path. They pass a ruined pond, then a large, lopsided Christmas tree strangled by honeysuckle, then, just beyond that, an improbable heap – a giant mound – of fresh grass clippings. The back fence lies ahead of them. His arms are smarting and aching. The moon suddenly dips behind a cloud.
‘I can’t see the gap …’
He blinks into the darkness, panicked.
‘Set me down. I’ll find it …’
He unhooks his hands from behind her knees, but – and this is the thing that will haunt him later; an unforgivable detail; a terrible omission – he neglects to disconnect his warm, flat palms from the gleaming shellac of her skin as her feet slither to the ground. His hands – almost as if now creatures of their own agency – run up the side of her legs to her hips as she lightly descends, concluding in the delicate silk of her shorts as she lands.
She remains where she is for a moment, her arms slung loosely about his neck, her forehead pressed softly into the middle of his back.
He worries that she might cut her bare feet on a remnant of broken glass. He remembers, in passing, that Mallory wanted him to check her geography homework, that he needs to ring the tax office, that there’s a problem with the liquid soap delivery at work, and the overwhelming nature of these worries – their dull particularity, their utter inexorability – spurs him into inhabiting the moment more absolutely, as if a scale has been tipped, or a heavy weight has been dropped on to the opposite side of a seesaw, a weight so thudding and absolute that he has been thrown into the air, jettisoned, like a cannonball, and while he knows – he knows – that everything must crash and splat and splinter once gravity finally takes its toll, just to be there, to feel the glistening immediacy of that moment, the freedom of it, the heat of it, the cloying warmth of its stickiness …
Valentine’s hands, meanwhile – those mysterious hands, those artistic hands – are moving over his shoulders, then swooping down to his ribs. She feels each rib, individually, plays them like the slight, multicoloured, metal keys of a child’s xylophone. His body sings to her touch – not a grand composition of different movements and complex parts (something you might require a full orchestra to produce), but a tiny, reedy, little tune, an inconsequential ditty written for a four-stringed banjo, a battered kick-drum and dented harmonica.
The Yips Page 27