Nicola Barker: The Yips

‘ KA-BOOM! ’

Ransom fires. It’s a clean shot.

‘They have an Olympic team,’ Gene says, snatching up the pad again, opening it and proffering it to her.

‘It’s not only golf, though.’ Jen waves the pad away. ‘I can’t stand tennis, either. I hate tennis. To my way of thinking it’s just a game invented by idiots, for idiots. Simple as.’

Before Jen can further substantiate this hypothesis, Gene has grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face the back wall of the bar. ‘What’s got into you tonight?’ he hisses.

Jen gazes up at him, wide-eyed. ‘I hate tennis, Gene.’ She shrugs (raising both hands, limp-wristedly, like a world-weary Jewish dowager). ‘Is that suddenly such a crime?’

Gene studies her face for a second, grimaces, releases her arm, then slaps the black notebook shut and tosses it — defeated — back under the counter.

Ransom downs the remainder of his beer in a single gulp, then burps, majestically, from the other side of the bar. Jen snorts, ribaldly. Gene shoots her a warning look.

Her mother swallows the paste and then gently belches.

‘You really shouldn’t swallow it,’ Valentine mutters. She’s just flushed the cat mess down the toilet and is now washing her hands, fastidiously, under the hot tap.

‘I’ve always swallowed it,’ her mother maintains.

‘Well, you taught me not to swallow it.’ Valentine turns the tap off.

Her mother inspects her teeth, critically, in the bathroom mirror.

‘You’re not meant to swallow it,’ Valentine persists, ‘you’re meant to spit it out.’

‘Really? Il dit ça sur le tube? ’

‘Pardon?’

‘Does it say that on the tube?’

Valentine shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Have a look.’

Her mother grabs the tube and proffers it to Valentine. Valentine shakes the water off her hands, takes the tube and inspects it.

‘Does it say you shouldn’t swallow?’

Her mother peers at the tube over Valentine’s shoulder.

‘No.’ Valentine frowns. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily …’

Her mother recommences brushing again. Valentine places the tube back into the tooth mug. She watches her mother for a while and then: ‘I think you’ve probably been brushing for long enough now,’ she says.

‘Really?’ Her mother stops brushing. ‘How long is “enough”?’

Valentine shrugs. ‘Two minutes?’

‘And how long have I …?’

‘About four.’

Her mother stares at her, blankly.

‘Four minutes. One, two, three, four …’

Valentine slowly counts the digits out on to her fingers. ‘So you’ve basically been brushing for almost double the amount of time you need to.’

Valentine illustrates this point, visually, by dividing the four fingers into two.

Her mother stares at Valentine’s fingers, intrigued. ‘If two twos are double,’ she wonders, ‘then what about three threes? Are three threes double?’

‘Uh … no.’ Valentine shakes her head. ‘Three times three is nine. That’s triple. Two times three is double.’

‘Two threes are six,’ her mother says.

‘Exactly.’ Valentine nods, encouragingly. ‘Two times three is six. Well done.’

She holds up six fingers and divides them in half.

‘Okay’ — her mother is now concentrating extremely hard — ‘and twice times fifty-fivety?’

‘Two times fifty-five is one hundred and ten.’ Valentine nods again. ‘Well done. That’s double, too.’

‘And twice times —’

‘You generally say two times,’ Valentine interrupts, ‘and it’s always double. Two of anything is always double. That’s the rule.’

She turns to dry her hands on a towel.

‘My teeth still feel furry, though,’ her mother murmurs, taking a small step forward and staring, fixedly, into the mirror again. ‘I want them to feel clean. I want them to feel toutes lisses .’

‘We’ve talked about this before.’ Valentine gently takes the toothbrush from her. ‘You just think they aren’t clean, but they are. Remember how the dentist …?’

‘You’re being unbelievably patronizing,’ her mother exclaims, suddenly irritable.

She pauses.

‘ Condescendant! And by the way,’ she continues, ‘I find it really disgusting that you flushed the cat mess down the loo.’

She goes and peers into the toilet bowl.

‘ Je n’ai pas t’élevée comme ça! Ça fait trop commun. ’

Valentine is inspecting her own, clear complexion in the bathroom mirror. The cat sitting closest to the doorway commences scratching itself, vigorously.

‘The toilet bowl is filthy! It’s disgusting,’ her mother grumbles. She turns to inspect the cat. ‘And these cats are disgusting, too. So many of them, et tellement poilus ! In fact this entire room is disgusting. All the fitments are disgusting. The light-fitment, the blind, even the colour is disgusting. Especially the colour.’

‘You used to adore these tiles,’ Valentine tells her. ‘The bathroom was one of the main reasons why you and Dad first fell in love with this house.’

‘ Please! ’ her mother snorts. ‘ Impossible! I don’t believe you! This shade of pink? Taramasalata pink? Vomit pink? It’s vile! Disgusting!’

‘You’re finding an awful lot to be disgusted about tonight,’ Valentine observes, dryly.

Her mother considers this notion for a moment, and then, ‘Because there’s a lot to be disgusted by , I suppose,’ she sighs.

‘You know it’s always struck me as ridiculous,’ Gene says, removing a large jar of salted cashews from under the counter, unscrewing the lid and then carefully topping up Ransom’s bar-snacks, ‘that golf doesn’t have the status of an Olympic sport yet.’

‘I do quite enjoy the odd match of ping-pong,’ Jen quietly ruminates from the rear, ‘but then it’s a completely different order of game to proper tennis.’

‘Well there’s the table part, for starters,’ Gene mutters (although his voice is pretty much obliterated as Jen commences flushing a clean jug of water through the coffee machine).

‘Golf,’ Ransom is sullenly addressing his beer bottle. ‘ Goll-oll-llolf .’

He frowns. ‘It isn’t stupid,’ he protests. ‘What’s so bloody stupid about it?’

He turns to Gene. ‘Do you think it’s stupid?’

Gene shrugs, helplessly.

‘ Goll-lluf ,’ Ransom repeats, exploring each individual letter with his tongue and his teeth.

‘Although I do find snooker quite selfish,’ Jen suddenly interjects (as the water finally completes its noisy cycle), ‘and snooker’s a table sport, so it can’t be entirely about the furniture, can it?’

Gene opens his mouth to respond and then closes it again, stumped.

‘I don’t even understand what you mean by selfish,’ Ransom grumbles, checking his phone and sending a quick text.

‘Well’ — Jen carefully adjusts an eyelash (which has briefly become unglued) — ‘by selfish I suppose I mean …’ She gnaws on her lower lip, thoughtfully. ‘I dunno. Selfish … Self-centred. Self-obsessed. Self-indulgent. Self-absorbed …’

‘I think we might best summarize Jen’s position,’ Gene quickly interjects, ‘as a borderline-irrational hatred of all so-called “individual” sports.’

‘ Ahhh. ’ Ransom finally starts to make sense of things.

‘Although I do quite like bowling,’ Jen demurs.

‘People generally bowl in a team.’ Gene shrugs.

‘And gymnastics. I like gymnastics.’

‘ Ditto .’

‘And I’ve always liked the javelin,’ Jen presses on. ‘In fact I love the javelin. There’s something really … really basic and primeval about the javelin.’