Nicola Barker - The Yips

Gene pulls the door shut behind him. The natural light grows dimmer and is gently refracted through its stained glass into a dozy blur of burgundies, olives and ambers. Everything seems quieter and slower. He notices tiny fragments of dust floating in the air around him, buoyed up not so much by the air itself, it seems, but by … by sound . By music.

Somewhere in the house a piano is being played — a brief refrain, repeated endlessly. Gene feels dull and soporific, like a heavy, crystal stylus stuck inside a groove; jumping forward, then back again, forward, then back again.

‘It’s my mother.’ Valentine reappears beside him. ‘She’s learning the piano as part of her therapy. Erik Satie. She plays the same, few notes over and over …’

As she speaks she leads him down the corridor, deposits him in front of the meter and then disappears upstairs. Gene opens the little cupboard, shines his torch on to the digits and is about to start taking a reading when he notices, with a scowl, that several of the screws that attach the main body of the meter to the surrounding brickwork have worked their way loose.

He focuses the light from his torch on to one of them and presses it with the soft pad of his finger. The entire box shifts under his touch, then a tightly folded wad of paper falls out from beneath it (where it has evidently been pushed to shore up the base).

Gene reaches down and grabs it, intending to push it back into its original position, but then something — he’s not quite sure what, exactly — stays his hand. He glances around him — projecting a not-entirely-convincing veneer of studied casualness — before carefully unfolding the thing and giving its contents a cursory glance.

It’s actually a letter — the top two-thirds of a letter, to be exact (and of a relatively recent vintage, at that). From what remains of the original, Gene is rapidly able to discern that it’s a final warning from a large, High Street bank. The letter threatens the addressee of its imminent intention to foreclose on their home (he double-checks the address, grimacing — yup ) for debts outstanding.

As he studies the letter, one of the screws (bottom left) works itself free from the brickwork and clatters down on to the tiles below. The meter (currently deprived of its paper support) tips forward slightly, with a mournful clank. Panicked, Gene quickly folds up the letter and shoves it back into its original place, then grabs the screw and replaces it, tightening it up with his thumbnail (he performs the same service to the other three).

Once this is done, he exhales, noisily ( Phew! Close call!), then shines the torch back on to the digits to take his reading. He frowns. He draws closer to the meter, blinking. The six digits are now a neat row of zeros.

He closes his eyes for a second, then re-opens them … Still all zeros! He rubs his chin, uncertain how to react. His face feels damp. He reaches into a back pocket, withdraws a white handkerchief and dabs it against his forehead as he ponders this conundrum. A cat silently glides down the hallway behind him, opting — when it reaches him — to slither, companionably, against his calves as it passes. Gene slams the cupboard door shut, with an ill-suppressed yelp, and turns, slightly panicked.

From where he’s currently standing he can see into a small sitting room where the child now lies sleeping on an old-fashioned, brown sofa with heavy, dark wood trim. Each armrest is bookended by a further pair of large felines. The floor is covered by a series of ornate but threadbare oriental rugs of various sizes — at least six or seven of them — piled one on top of the other, in an exotic collage.

On one wall is a collection of round, antique, brass-coloured fish-eye mirrors. To the left of these, a handful of chipped and dented, metal, hand-painted signs lean up against the skirting, one advertising Bournville Drinking Chocolate, the others representing older brands he’s not quite so familiar with.

A voluptuous wisp of smoke curls into his eye-line. Just as he’s taking a tentative step forward to try and locate its source, his phone starts to ring. Both cats respond, in sync, leaping from their individual armrests and darting (with an almost choreographed precision) to opposite far corners of the room. Gene nearly drops his clipboard in his rush to respond (keen not to disturb the sleeping child) –

‘Hello?’ he whispers.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello?’ he repeats, slightly louder (as the child sleeps on, unperturbed).

‘Hello?’ a voice says (a male voice, northern, marginally flustered). ‘Is that …? Uh … Bollocks . Hang on a second …’

(Brief moment of indecision.)

‘Christ Almighty — who the heck are you again?’

* * *

Although plainly in desperate need of practice (virtually every element of his game is currently in free-fall), Ransom has yet to actually make it out on to the driving range. Instead he may be located (by all but the most incompetent of Satellite Tracking Systems) standing plumb in the middle of a magnificent, giant, outdoor chessboard (the exquisitely wrought pieces of an abandoned game dotted all around him), enjoying a cigarette, his cap pulled down over his forehead, while he speaks, animatedly, into his mobile phone.

‘… that antsy, little Muslim kid on reception,’ he’s muttering. ‘Short-arse. Wonky teeth … You know the one …’

He kicks out his leg and idly prods at a nearby pawn with his toe. In the distance (approximately thirty or so yards away, due south) two men may be seen emerging from the residential segment of the hotel. After Ransom’s third, desultory prod, the pawn rocks, topples and then rolls. Both men witness this act of low-level vandalism with what can only be described as looks of violent discomfiture and break — wordlessly — into a spontaneous trot.

One of them — shorter, heavier-set, in his shirtsleeves, possessed of a dramatic, dark blond comb-over which flaps up and down like a pedal-bin-lid as he runs — clutches a navy blue, gold-buttoned blazer in his hand. The second gentleman is taller, handsome — something of a dandy — wearing cream loafers, cream trousers, cream trilby (a maroon ribbon circling the brim), an expensive, lavender-coloured polo shirt and heavy, arty, dark grey Yves Saint Laurent-framed glasses. He moves with an exaggerated angularity (knees high, arms thrown out) like a stick figure in a poorly executed flicker-book animation.

‘ Oi! ’ the first man bellows, gesticulating, wildly. ‘ Oi! You! Stop! That game’s still in progress! ’

Ransom gives no indication of having heard him. His ear remains firmly pressed into his phone.

‘Apologize?!’ he suddenly snorts, indignant. ‘I’m not ringing to apologize — it was his weed for Christ’s sake! He virtually foisted the stuff on me. Got it at bloody Christian camp! Nasty shit it was, too — almost blew my friggin’ head off. Totally maxed me out …’

He takes a final puff on his cigarette and then crushes the remainder beneath his heel as he listens. ‘The analgesics are for a repetitive strain injury,’ he says, with just a touch of hauteur. ‘What the hell else was I expected to do? We were bouncing off the fucking ceiling! The situation was critical. He’d started thinking his fingers were edible — kept gnawing away at his thumb! Said it tasted like Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. It was a disaster! A bloody nightmare! I mean’ — he gazes up at a neat, little bank of cumulus in the sky above him — ‘I mean I’m not calling myself “the hero of the hour” or anything — far from it — but you should just count your lucky stars a sensible adult was on hand to try and keep a lid on things …’