Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘There’s this terrible photo in the Daily Star website …’

‘Is there?’

‘And one in the Mirror ’s. He’s sprawled over a car bonnet. It’s taken from the back, but it’s gruesome. In fact if you look really closely you can make out part of your arm — you’ve got him in some weird kind of head-lock …’

‘I was simply trying to hold him up.’ Gene scowls, exasperated.

‘He’d had a good skinful.’ Jen sniggers.

‘He had his cap pulled down over his face. Didn’t have a clue where he was going. Then someone knocked the thing askew in the scramble — probably a photographer — and he completely lost the plot. Started throwing punches, spitting, swearing — ended up vomiting all over the bonnet of the cab. The cabbie was livid and promptly drove off …’

‘Oh my God.’

‘… so I ended up just piling him into the Megane and driving him myself.’

As Gene speaks, the small girl enters the kitchen. He turns to look at her.

‘Where to? Back to the Leaside?’

The child peers up at him and smiles. She’s a beautiful little thing with angelic blue eyes and short, white-blonde curls.

‘Back to the Leaside?’ Jen repeats.

‘Uh …’ Gene frowns, struggling to focus. ‘No. No .’

He turns to face the wall again. ‘When we got back to the Leaside he became convinced that he wouldn’t be safe there, that we’d been followed. He got all tearful and melodramatic …’

He rolls his eyes. ‘It was quite a performance.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘What could I do? I just took him home and stuck him in Mallory’s bed for the night.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Jen chortles. ‘Back to the rectory?!’

‘It was fine. Mallory came in with Sheila and me. He’d virtually passed out by that point, anyhow —’

‘So where’s he now?’ Jen interrupts.

‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘Won’t he still be at your place?’

‘I doubt it.’ Gene frowns, peering down at his watch.

‘Well give me your home phone number and I’ll check,’ Jen suggests.

‘Sorry?’

Gene’s patently not sold on the idea.

‘Your home phone number. So I can check.’

‘But I’m pretty sure —’

‘Just give it to me, Gene!’ Jen snaps.

Gene gives her the phone number.

‘Brilliant! You’re a star!’

Jen hangs up.

Gene removes his phone from his ear and stares down at it for a second, scowling, then shoves it back into his pocket, draws a deep breath, carefully fixes his expression and turns.

‘So let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’ he exclaims, holding out his hand to the child with what he hopes is an air of confident jocularity.

‘Is it salvageable?’

They are hunched over the cracked and fissured lemon-coloured laminate of the breakfast bar in the rectory’s rickety, L-shaped kitchen, inspecting the sodden letter.

‘I don’t know.’ Stan scowls. ‘I mean I’ve done my best with the first page …’

He holds it up to the light, squinting. ‘But it’s very blurred in places …’

A bare-chested Ransom snatches it from him, impatiently.

‘It’s perfectly legible!’ he exclaims.

‘Yeah, well …’

Stan isn’t convinced.

‘You’ve done a brilliant job!’ Ransom enthuses, picking up the pressed flower. ‘And the flower’s still basically intact, which is great …’

‘It’s a flowering clover,’ Stan mutters. ‘A lucky clover. It had four leaves originally.’

‘ So? ’

Ransom refuses to be dispirited.

‘So one of the leaves is now completely …’

Stan grimaces as he points to it. ‘That’s just mangled.’

Even Ransom can’t deny the harsh truth of this statement. ‘Yeah. Yeah . But …’ He blows softly on the clover (hoping to bulk it out with his breath, perhaps). ‘But you still get the general idea …’

Stan picks up the damaged photo. It’s an old, black and white publicity shot of a young, dark-haired, female contortionist in a harlequin-style leotard (with the obligatory white, frilled ruff) performing an exaggerated backbend. Her face smiles out from between her ankles (her chin resting, jauntily, on her hands). A quantity of the shredded wheat obscures one leg, knee and foot.

‘Her face is fine,’ Ransom mutters, peering, intrigued, at her sharply jutting pubic bone. ‘If we could maybe just …’ He leans over and starts prodding, clumsily, at a damp strand of the wheat with his forefinger.

‘Careful!’ Stan yelps, snatching it away. ‘The photographic ink’s still really unstable.’

Ransom withdraws his hand, jarred.

‘Perhaps we should use a hairdryer?’ he volunteers. ‘See if it peels off more easily once the liquid’s all evaporated?’

‘Yeah.’

The kid doesn’t seem especially enthused by this notion. He places down the photo (beyond the golfer’s reach) and picks up the Order of Service.

‘How’s that thing coming on?’ Ransom reaches over and grabs a hold of it. The paper on the bottom half has bubbled up and the print has become furry in several places. He gives it a tentative sniff.

‘Not too bad,’ he murmurs (wincing at the sour smell of the milk), ‘I mean we’re definitely making progress here …’

As Ransom appraises all the artefacts, en masse , he suddenly feels curiously distended again. Swollen. Like a sheep bloated with methane. He puffs out his cheeks (as a physical expression of this odd, internal sensation) and then expels the air, violently (producing a loud, hollow, farting sound).

Stan glances up, startled. The golfer tosses down the Order of Service and picks up Stan’s copy of Bruce Lee’s Artist of Life . ‘This thing any good?’ he asks, idly flipping through it.

‘Depends on your definition of “good”,’ Stan answers, somewhat inscrutably.

Ransom thinks for a few seconds. ‘Gisele Bundchen’s baps,’ he eventually volunteers.

Stan carefully considers this suggestion. ‘I’m not sure if that’s an appropriate frame of reference,’ he eventually concludes.

Ransom places down the book again. ‘I actually had a brief correspondence with Linda Lee Cadwell …’

‘Lee’s wife?’

Stan’s impressed. ‘What about?’

‘I dunno. Bruce. Fame. Mysticism. Sport. Competition. Life …’

Ransom commences picking, distractedly, at an ingrown hair on his forearm.

‘So once we’ve dried all this stuff off,’ he eventually mutters, abandoning the ingrown hair, gazing down at his naked torso, tensing his chest muscles and watching his generous, brown nipples jerk skyward, ‘then what?’

Stan frowns, focusing on the nipples himself (his dark brows automatically arching, in sync). ‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well d’you reckon it might be possible to just stick it all back into the book and … uh …’ Ransom shrugs.

‘What?’ Stan looks scandalized. ‘Bang it back on to the shelf again like nothing’s happened?’

Ransom shifts in his seat, quickly diverting his attention from Stan’s accusing gaze to a small window cut into the tiling above the stainless-steel sink. Beyond this window stands a large vehicle covered in tarpaulin.

‘What is that out there?’ he demands, rising slightly. ‘A truck of some kind? A jeep?’

‘But wouldn’t that just be wrong ?’ Stan interrupts, refusing to be diverted.

Ransom flinches at the word ‘wrong’. He abhors moral imperatives. The word ‘wrong’ hangs in the air between them, buzzing, self-righteously, like an angry black hornet.

‘Absolutely,’ Ransom finally concedes, smiling brightly as he sits back down again, ‘of course it would be wrong. Of course it would be. I was just thinking out loud — just trying the idea on for size — brain storming, if you like … Although …’ He pauses, thoughtfully. ‘Although in my experience, which is — as I’m sure you can imagine — pretty extensive …’ (He pauses again, portentously.) ‘Golf is principally a game of the mind, a game of strategy, after all … I’ve generally found that actually telling people about something like this — a serious problem or a terrible catastrophe — confronting them with it, unhelpfully, at an inappropriate moment, can often end up generating more hurt and distress than simply letting the whole thing unfold in a more gradual, a more natural, a more … uh … how to put this? A more organic way.’