‘Well how about Gene?’ Nimrod suggests.
‘I’m easy.’ Gene shrugs. He glances over at Valentine who immediately looks panicked.
‘I’ll just be on the other side of the door,’ he tries to console her.
She continues to look anxious. Her hand rises to her throat.
‘How about I pop out there now, while you finish setting up, so you can grow accustomed to the idea?’ Gene suggests. ‘And if at any time you start to feel like you’re losing control or getting too stressed then just yell and I’ll dash straight back inside again.’
Valentine finally relents, nods, and recommences unpacking and arranging her inks. Gene disappears into the corridor, breathing a deep sigh of relief. Ransom promptly follows.
‘So what’s that all about?’ he demands, as soon as the door’s been yanked shut behind him.
‘Sorry?’
‘This weird power you have over these girls. It’s kind of creepy. What is it? What’s your technique?’
‘There’s no technique,’ Gene demurs.
‘No technique? That’s your technique. Good call.’ Ransom nods. He suddenly starts running on the spot, the ice and whisky sloshing around in his glass.
‘You feel okay about the tattoo?’ Gene promptly relieves him of it for the sake of the carpet.
‘Nope. Scared stupid. Shitting myself.’
Ransom continues to jog.
‘Shaking like a friggin’ leaf.’
Gene gazes down the corridor.
‘I dug out the cornet,’ he volunteers.
‘Really?’ Ransom stops jogging.
‘It’s in the car.’
Ransom starts jogging again.
‘Valentine was telling me earlier how a lot of her clients actually get tattooed for the pain not in spite of it,’ Gene volunteers.
‘Friggin’ masochists!’ Ransom snorts.
‘They see it as a kind of rite of passage,’ Gene persists. ‘I mean look at Maori culture – there’s almost a spiritual aspect to it. Their tattoos are a symbol of endurance, of strength, representing a journey into manhood.’
‘Fuck pain,’ Ransom pants, ‘I mean fuck pain. Seriously. Fuck it. It’s over-rated. I friggin’ hate it. I hate pain.’
‘No point resisting,’ Gene counsels. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned about pain during my various bad health experiences, it’s that you’ve got to try and work with it. I’m not saying embrace it, but don’t resist it. Just let it be what it is. Accept it. And keep loose. Don’t tense the muscles. Always try and breathe through it.’
‘Fuck pain.’
Ransom stops jogging, snatches his glass, swallows the remainder of his drink in a single gulp and then gasps.
‘You’ll need to keep up your blood-sugar levels,’ Gene warns him.
‘Don’t people ever get bored of all the cancer shit?’ Ransom wonders, handing back the glass and then leaning forward, hands pressed on to his knees, trying to catch his breath. ‘Just the constant harping on about it the whole time? I mean it’s gotta wear a bit thin, hasn’t it? I bet your wife’s sick to the back teeth of it. I bet she’s like, “Fuck it, Gino, can we just talk about the friggin’ weather for once?”’
‘Sheila’s incredibly tolerant.’ Gene smiles, wryly.
‘I wonder where Jen’s got to,’ Ransom muses, peering down the corridor, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You’d think she’d be here with bells on, man, if only to friggin’ gloat.’
‘Jen’s gone AWOL,’ Gene murmurs, ‘which is probably no bad thing under the circumstances.’
‘You better believe it!’ Ransom harrumphs, hand pressing down on the door handle. ‘The girl’s nothing but a friggin’ pest. She’s toxic.’
‘She could certainly be considered an acquired taste,’ Gene concurs.
‘Acquired?! That’s a polite way of putting it!’ Ransom snorts, pulling wide the door. ‘She’s like that fucked-up Italian cheese with maggots running through it.’
‘Casu Marzu,’ Gene volunteers. ‘It’s Sardinian.’
‘Yeah yeah – whatever.’
The golfer steps into the hotel room and slams the door shut behind him.
Gene leans back against the wall with a wan smile. He inspects Ransom’s empty glass, then jiggles the ice around in it. He closes his eyes for a second. He feels exhausted. He opens his eyes again, places the glass next to the skirting and takes out his phone. He starts going through his messages. There’s one from the blood donation people, two from work, five from Jen (consisting of a series of vague, squawking sounds, but with no actual message attached) and most recently (ten past eight to be precise), there’s a missed call from Sheila.
‘Gene – you need to ring me as soon as you get this. It’s ten past eight. Something very odd has happened. It might be really serious. You need to ring me – ring my mobile, not the house. Just as soon as you get this …’
(brief pause)
‘It’s not Mallory. Mallory’s fine. I’m fine. Just ring me.’
Gene scratches his head, scowling, then quickly connects his phone to Sheila’s mobile. After two rings she answers it.
‘Gene? Thank God it’s finally you! What took you so long? I’ve been staring at the phone just willing it to ring! I’m a nervous wreck!’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve only just –’
‘Did you hear from Jen?’ Sheila interrupts.
‘Jen?’
‘I thought you mentioned something earlier about getting Jen to …’
‘She didn’t show up,’ Gene mutters.
‘Okay. Okay. Well did she get in contact? Make her excuses?’
Gene frowns. ‘There were a couple of messages but they weren’t really …’
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing. They were mainly just interference.’
‘Fine. Okay. Okay. Okay …’ Sheila’s plainly very agitated.
‘Just calm down,’ Gene cautions her, concerned, ‘take a deep breath.’
‘Okay. So there’s no simple way of putting this,’ Sheila runs on, oblivious, ‘and it may sound really weird to you because it is really weird, but I think Jen’s been kidnapped.’
Brief pause.
‘Kidnapped?’
‘Yes. There was a garbled message on our answer-phone. She rang this afternoon, shortly after you came home with Mallory. It was really difficult to decipher. She sounded extremely distressed. She said something about “Israel’s mother – Vicki”. Putting two and two together I’m guessing that she might’ve been referring to Vicki Wilson – Ransom’s manager’s activist sister – the woman who wants me to help her with the book.’
‘Hang on, just …’ Gene turns to face the wall. ‘The woman who wants you to help her with the book is …?’
‘Ransom’s manager’s sister.’
Gene’s brows shoot up. ‘And you didn’t think to mention that little piece of information earlier?’
‘There are a series of … uh …’ – Sheila’s plainly discomforted – ‘let’s just say “special circumstances”.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Gene nods.
‘Sorry?’
‘I know about …’ Gene glances towards the door. ‘Jen told me.’
‘I just didn’t want to over-complicate matters. It was all getting a bit …’
‘Convoluted.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So you’re telling me that Jen left a message on our answer-phone, earlier this afternoon, actually stating that she’d been …?’
‘Like I say, it’s quite hard to decipher. I’ve listened to it about a hundred times. I should probably just play it to you – that’s why I got you to ring me on my mobile. I’ll hold the phone up close to the machine. Hang on a minute …’
A brief scrabbling sound is followed by a mechanical click, then the message commences to play.
‘Gene – bmuff me – please limun – my phmumn is nearly numf of … Vick wuffon Israel’s mun ther just shoved me nefoo th
e … I don’t knuff where … iff you numf this … please …’
The line falls dead.
‘Did you get that?’ Sheila demands. ‘Shall I play it again?’
‘What makes you think …?’ Gene starts off, bemused.
‘She sounds scared – really scared – and her voice is strangely muffled – like she’s in a tunnel or some kind of confined space.’
‘It could just be a bad line,’ Gene argues.
‘But she does sound scared.’
‘That doesn’t mean she’s been kidnapped. She simply said that someone called Vicki shoved her’ – Gene grimaces – ‘and to be perfectly honest, Sheila, knowing Jen as I do …’
‘Okay, so you’re going to have to suspend your … uh …’ Sheila struggles to find the right word.
‘D’you feel all right?’ Gene interjects. ‘How’s the leg?’
‘Of course I don’t feel all right!’ Sheila exclaims, exasperated. ‘I’m in a complete, bloody state! What’s that word? … Credulity? Cynicism? It’s a “c” word – it’s definitely a “c” word.’
‘Whatever it is, I’ll suspend it,’ Gene promises.
‘It’s just that …’ – Sheila clears her throat – ‘… this is going to sound a bit strange, okay, but I climbed inside my suitcase earlier.’
‘Your suitcase?’ Gene echoes.
‘Yes. I climbed inside my suitcase. The phone was ringing. I was on the computer. I walked out on to the upstairs landing and I found myself gazing down at my suitcase – being really … really drawn to it. I opened it up and then the next thing I know I’m climbing into it – climbing inside my suitcase and closing the lid. I know it sounds odd. It is odd. And even as I was doing it I was thinking, What the hell are you playing at, Sheila? This is completely ridiculous!’
‘What were you playing at?’ Gene cordially enquires.
‘I don’t know. But it was like … I can’t explain it. It was like this powerful urge to be in a confined space. Kind of the same, basic impulse that made me go up into the attic, earlier.’
‘But I thought you went into the attic to fetch your case?’
A brief silence follows.
‘It’s kind of like I’m having a … a sort of meltdown,’ Sheila continues, ‘like there’s this new, slightly uncontrolled me who keeps doing all this really arbitrary stuff … But I’m not – obviously,’ she rapidly assures him, ‘not melting. I basically feel okay. A little tired, maybe – over-wrought – drained – cynical – empty – directionless – frustrated – exhausted, but not melted. Definitely not melted.’
‘Well that’s … that’s very reassuring.’ Gene suddenly has the curious sensation that his head might be about to explode.
‘I just feel like it’s the culmination of something,’ Sheila continues, ‘something … I … I don’t know what it is. You joked the other day about it being a crisis of faith but I still have faith – in abundance! I mean my faith is one of the few things I remain completely certain of – although I’m not sure quite how … how sustaining it is at this particular point in time.’
She pauses, speculatively. Gene glances down at his watch. Even as he does so he realizes that the time is irrelevant. What was that poem … (he finds himself idly pondering), or was it just a trashy song lyric? ‘All we have is time until the end of time’?
‘So then I started to speculate,’ (Sheila is talking again), ‘that it might be about a journey, about my leaving – you know, this … this “culmination” – that it might be about my doing something utterly ego-driven and selfish for once, but at the same time something utterly elevated and generous and philanthropic – like going to Jamaica to work on the book. But the more I’ve sat here thinking about it, the more convinced I feel that this isn’t about me at all. It’s not about me, Gene! I’ve been so focused on myself – so self-absorbed – and what I really needed was to be …’
‘So you think God might be a guiding presence in this … this “culmination” of yours?’ Gene asks, barely keeping the exhaustion out of his voice.
‘It’s like my almost turning away has actually been a turning towards …’ Sheila runs on, amazed. ‘It’s like … I’m sorry, Gene,’ she groans, ‘but I simply can’t explain this to you – a cynic, a non-believer – in human words.’
‘Human words?’ Gene echoes.
‘That sounds crazy – I know it does, but the life of faith, the sense of grace or no grace, the relationship a person establishes with God doesn’t always tally with rational ideas and language. That’s been my mistake. That’s why when I came across the kitten poem by Anne Sexton in the garage the other day …’
‘Kitten?’ Gene murmurs (growing more disheartened by the second).
‘“Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?”’ she quotes,
‘“Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter …” I forget the last line … hang on …
‘“Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter …’ she repeats, haltingly,
‘“I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.”’
Short pause.
‘Blowing up. The kitten of butter. Nothing making sense.’
‘I don’t remember you mentioning this poem before –’ Gene starts off.
‘It’s like I’ve been trying to fill in a crossword, you know – with letters,’ she interrupts, ‘when I should’ve been doing a jigsaw puzzle. Making sense out of images. Because it’s not linguistic, it’s visual. I’ve finally realized that my intellectual life and my religious life are completely at odds with each other. I think I may have a kind of … of visual faith – heart faith, gut faith – and I’ve been making the stupid mistake of …’
Gene glances up at the ceiling then closes his eyes. He struggles to gather together his depleted resources.
‘And that’s fine,’ Sheila continues. ‘It’s not a problem. It’s absolutely fine. In fact it’s actually a huge weight off my mind at some, strange level.’
‘So if I can finally summarize,’ he interjects, ‘you’re ringing me because you honestly think …’ – he struggles to bite back the powerful feeling of irritation that grips him – ‘you seriously believe that my work colleague, Jen, might’ve been kidnapped by Esther’s sister, Vicki Wilson. Ransom’s ex,’ he adds.
‘Ah. So you do know about that connection.’ Sheila’s relieved. ‘That’s good. That’s a relief. I’ve been struggling with the idea of breaking a confidence.’
‘Jen brought him – the boy, I mean.’ Gene lowers his voice. ‘Vicki’s son, Israel – she brought him to the club this afternoon.’
‘What happened?’ Sheila’s outraged.
‘Not much so far as I can tell.’
‘This certainly gives Vicki motive,’ Sheila muses.
‘Yes. I suppose it does to some extent,’ Gene concedes.
‘Well, to answer your previous question,’ Sheila rapidly follows on, ‘I am completely convinced. It’s a leap of faith – of course it is, at one level – but I just … I just know – have this powerful gut instinct – that Jen is in a confined space, like an attic, or a suitcase. And after I listened to the tape about a hundred times I decided that the strong likelihood is that she’s stuck in the boot of a car. I know it sounds insane …’
‘So you’re presuming that this Vicki has a car – maybe a rental.’
‘A hire car. And at the start of the tape there’s something that sounds a tiny bit like a siren. This wailing sound – did you notice it?’
‘No.’ Gene shakes his head.
‘Well I have a hunch that it’s a siren, which leads me to think that Jen might be stuck in the boot of a hire car parked in or around the hospital grounds.’
‘I see.’ Gene nods.
‘It’s funny,’ Sheila murmurs, somewhat bitter-sweetly, ‘but when I thought this was all about me – my journey – I actually started to wonder whether I’d hurt my leg simply to facilitate the weird, c
hance meeting with Vicki so that I could finally fulfil my long-held literary ambitions. Like this was to be God’s gift to me. A thank you. A big pay-off. I mean the canteen was packed, and it was way after lunchtime – only one spare seat, at her table. I honestly thought it was all about me and writing – that I would finally write a book – return to writing.’
‘I had no idea,’ Gene mutters, jaundiced.
‘Because I locked it all away,’ Sheila sighs, portentously, ‘I packed it all up and stored it in the attic – after Stan came. But it was always there.’
‘I see,’ Gene repeats (through gritted teeth).
‘Be that as it may,’ Sheila barrels on, oblivious, ‘it’s all irrelevant, really, because I’ve now realized that I was barking up completely the wrong tree – this whole thing wasn’t about me after all. None of it was. I’m just a quiet observer – a dispassionate pair of eyes. I’m a tool. My ego got in the way a bit for a while back there – that’s partly why I’d been thinking all this crazy stuff about you and Jen – questioning the true nature of your relationship. It was ludicrous – laughable – I can see that now.’
‘Right.’ Gene nods, uncomfortable.
‘Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I need you to drive over to the hospital and see if you can find her.’
Gene draws a deep breath. ‘But I’m stuck here, Sheila,’ he explains, ‘I’m helping with the tattoo. Your tattoo. I’m looking after …’
He can’t say her name. He opens his mouth and then closes it again.
‘I fully appreciate that,’ Sheila concedes, ‘but this is important – a crisis.’
‘As I’m sure you can imagine,’ Gene persists, ‘she’s incredibly stressed and anxious. I’m her entire support network. I can’t just up and leave. She’s depending on me.’
‘Are you with her now?’ Sheila wonders.
‘No. I’m standing guard in the hallway.’
‘Standing guard?’
‘The club’s management are kicking up a stink about the tattoo.’
‘Then just nip off,’ Sheila suggests.
‘Just “nip off”?!’ Gene’s appalled. ‘I don’t think you quite understand …’
How important I am, he thinks.
‘Just pop your head into the room, let her know that you’re still out there, then quickly nip off. She’ll be busy with the tattoo – preoccupied. It’s not going to take you very long. Forty minutes, tops.’
The Yips Page 49