Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘I have a collection of housecoats,’ she expands, pinching, dispassionately, at the spotted fabric. ‘I buy them on the internet. There’s still quite a market for them in France …’

‘My grandmother virtually lived in them,’ he volunteers.

‘Mine too.’ She smiles. ‘Although I prefer to wear them in the French way, like the French do: as a dress, with nothing underneath …’

Gene’s own eyebrows now rise, infinitesimally.

‘What I mean to say is that the English like to wear them differently,’ she flounders, her cheeks reddening, ‘over the top of their clothes — like an apron …’

Gene furtively inspects the housecoat as she speaks. It clings to her curves in a way he can’t really believe a housecoat should. He remembers his grandmother’s housecoats: nylon, blue gingham, loose, drab, lumpy …

‘The antique ones are nicer, though,’ she runs on, embarrassed. ‘Softer. Less synthetic. Better fabrics …’

Gene nods. He can’t really think of anything pertinent to add. Valentine bites her lip. Her lipstick, he notices, matches her housecoat perfectly, and there’s a deep and immensely characterful dimple in her cheek.

‘So when did you realize?’ she wonders, eager to change the subject.

‘Pardon?’

He glances up from her dimple.

‘The meter. Our electricity meter …?’

‘Oh, that …’ He smiles, ruefully. ‘I was about halfway home.’

‘You must’ve kicked yourself!’

‘Yeah …’ He nods. ‘This isn’t even my area. I’m usually based around Sundon Park — Limbury — Leagrave … I’m just covering for a colleague who’s been off sick all week.’

As he speaks she shifts Nessa on her hip and then adjusts her grip. He notices a tattoo on her arm — towards the top. It’s a drawing of a cupcake with the words ‘Daddy’s Girl’ written underneath. She catches him studying it. ‘It’s one of my dad’s,’ she explains. ‘I had it made up from an original stencil of his after he died …’

She smiles, self-deprecatingly. ‘… as a kind of two-fingered salute to the world, I suppose. He was a local tattoo artist — Reg Tucker. Reggie Tucker. You probably …?’

‘Sure.’ Gene nods. ‘He had a place over on Mill Street. A friend of mine owned the war games shop a couple of doors down.’

‘Not Marek?’

Her face lights up. ‘I haven’t seen him in ages! How’s he doing?’

‘Great.’ Gene grins. ‘Still living the life of an international playboy with no visible means of support. Dividing his time between London and Warsaw — full of crazy schemes …’

‘Same old Marek, then.’ She chuckles.

‘He’s actually …’

Gene is going to say, ‘… my wife’s ex,’ but he doesn’t. Instead he says, ‘… dumped his old Hummer on me. It’s leaking dangerous quantities of brake fluid on to my back patio as we speak.’

‘That piece of junk’s still roadworthy?!’ She laughs in sheer disbelief.

‘Against all the odds.’ He nods.

‘Oh God …’ Valentine shakes her head as she remembers. ‘We hired it to use as a centrepiece for this rave once and it broke down on the M1 — junction 12 — just after the turn-off for Toddington …’

‘Leak in the water tank,’ Gene interjects, ‘if I remember correctly.’

Valentine looks startled.

‘Marek sent me to fix it,’ he explains.

‘Marek sent you …?’

Valentine’s confused.

‘There was some lanky kid at the wheel with a thick Welsh accent,’ Gene recalls, ‘fancied himself as something of a mechanic.’

‘That’s Yorath.’ Valentine nods. ‘Really tall. Ruby on his front tooth …’

‘Then this huge girl in a tiny, leather minidress …’

‘Glenna Ross. Bright green eyes. Amazing singing voice …’

‘And a crazy woman dressed up as a cat.’

‘ Tiger! ’ Valentine yelps. ‘Dressed up as a tiger! That was me! I was promoting this disgusting orange vodka drink …’

‘That was you?’

Now it’s Gene’s turn to look spooked. ‘But you were completely …’

He’s going to say, ‘… deranged,’ but stops himself, just in time, ‘… different,’ he compromises, ‘smaller.’

‘I’d probably shrunk in the rain …’ She chuckles, wryly. ‘It was such a filthy night — remember? I was out of my head on painkillers. I’d sprained my thumb, like a bloody idiot, falling off a bus …’

Gene’s still looking incredulous.

‘I was going through this really clumsy phase,’ she expands, ‘kept tripping over — walking into stuff — dropping things. I’d bruised my coccyx, twisted my ankle …’ She shakes her head, forlornly. ‘I’d just been dumped by my boyfriend, Mischa. He’d run away to become a monk’ — she grimaces — ‘which was kind of stupid and embarrassing. My dad had died. My brother and his girlfriend were struggling with all these chronic, addiction problems. We were pretty much broke. Mum was about to leave hospital after her accident …’

She finally runs out of steam.

‘I made you stick your head between your knees,’ Gene recollects.

‘And I puked on to my favourite shoes. A pair of killer stilettos covered in orange sequins. I was completely livid …’

‘Not the greatest of nights out,’ Gene sympathizes.

‘You looked different, though.’ She inspects him, critically. ‘Your hair was different, for starters — short. Like a skinhead.’

‘I’d just finished a course of radiotherapy.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Oh God. And there was me, hyperventilating, totally self-involved, jabbering on at you like a lunatic …’

She’s appalled.

‘You’d wound your hair into these two, funny little buns …’ He grins.

‘Tiger ears,’ she snorts. ‘And you kept reciting that stupid tiger poem at me —’

‘William Blake,’ Gene interrupts.

‘Yeah. To try and shake me out of my blasted funk …’

‘It’s the only poem I know by heart,’ Gene confesses. ‘I learned it at school. If you’d been dressed as a squirrel I’d’ve been screwed.’

‘It was Fated, then,’ Valentine declares.

They stare at each other for a second, both smiling, delightedly. Then, ‘My wife’s a vicar,’ Gene blurts out.

‘Really?’

It takes Valentine a couple of seconds to process this statement.

‘I mean I know how weird it feels when someone you’re in love with suddenly becomes …’

‘Church of England?’ she asks, her voice clipped, almost curt.

He nods.

She promptly lifts Nessa’s dress to reveal a neat pair of pants. ‘We Tuckers aren’t all complete reprobates, you know,’ she mutters, then turns and heads off down the hallway, disappearing into a room on her left.

Gene remains where he stands for a moment, nonplussed, uncertain whether to follow her or not. After thirty or so seconds he decides that he should and enters the hallway himself, instantly detecting — after a couple of steps — that slight but pervasive smell of sandalwood incense. His eyes alight on the large aspidistra and the black, Bakelite phone which perches — like an old rook: head hung low, dull plumage ruffled, wings slightly unfurled — on its handsome walnut stand. He feels a sudden thrill of recognition at the pattern of the antique floor tiles, a feeling — which instantly confuses him — almost akin to coming home.

He remembers his grandparents’ humble two-up-two-down on Charles Street: the highly buffed, red-painted concrete step which his grandmother burnished to a glassy finish every Friday, without fail; the brown door with its stiff, brass, horseshoe-style knocker and number twelve positioned directly above (notable for the absence of its second digit; the two represented — symbolically, at least — by a couple of tiny, black nail holes); the large, elephant’s foot umbrella stand in the hall, stuffed with his grandfather’s walking sticks (his childhood favourite with its finely carved bone handle fashioned into the shape of an albino otter); the air heavy with the smell of damp tea towels, boiled spring greens and bacon rind; a rich, olfactory maelstrom always gently underscored by the acrid, lemon scent of Jif scouring powder.