Nicola Barker - The Yips

She calmly retrieves this mysterious object and holds it aloft, balefully, like a down-at-heel court official tiredly displaying an especially incriminating piece of criminal evidence to judge and jury.

‘ Huh? ’

Ransom’s virile tattoo slows down to a gentle pitter-pat.

‘I know who you are,’ Jen repeats (struggling to repress a grin), ‘I’m just pretending that I don’t to wind Eugene up.’

‘Eugene?’

Ransom’s tattoo stops.

‘Eugene. Gene. The barman. I love taking the mick out of him when someone famous comes in. It’s just this sick little game we like to play …’ She pauses, thoughtfully. ‘Or this sick, little game I like to play’ — she chuckles, naughtily — ‘kind of at Gene’s expense.’

Ransom stares at Jen, blankly, and then the penny suddenly drops. ‘Oh wow …’ he murmurs, instinctively withdrawing his fingers into his fists. ‘Oh shit. ’

‘I mean don’t get me wrong,’ Jen chunters on, oblivious, ‘I love Eugene to bits, but he’s just so infuriatingly laid back’ — she rolls her eyes, riled — ‘and gentle and polite and decent , that I can never quite resist …’

She glances over at the golfer as she speaks, registers his stricken expression and then pulls herself up short. ‘Oh heck ,’ she mutters, shocked. ‘Didn’t you realize? But I made it so obvious! I mean all the stuff about … about tennis and leeches and … and Norfolk . God. I thought I was telegraphing it from the rooftops!’

Long pause .

‘Oh, yeah. Yeah .’ Ransom flaps his hand at her, airily (although both cheeks — by sharp contrast — are now flushing a deep crimson). ‘Of course I realized! Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘Really?’

Jen isn’t convinced.

‘Of course I fuckin’ realized!’ Ransom snaps, almost belligerent.

Jen grabs his empty beer bottle, tosses it into a crate behind the counter and then fetches him a replacement (flipping off the lid by hitting it, flamboyantly, against the edge of the bar top).

‘ Jesus! ’ Ransom is leaning back on his stool, meanwhile, a light patina of moisture forming on his upper lip. ‘ Jesus! ’ he repeats, glancing anxiously over his shoulder, towards the kitchens.

‘Here.’

Jen hands him the fresh beer.

‘Cheers.’ The golfer snatches it from her and affixes it, hungrily, to his lips. Jen watches him, speculatively, as he drinks.

‘ FUUUCK! ’ he gasps, finally slamming down the empty bottle, with an exaggerated flourish. ‘What a gull , eh?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What a sucker!’

Jen looks baffled.

‘A gull — a stooge — a patsy!’ Ransom expands.

Jen still looks baffled.

‘Eugene. Gene . Your barman. What a gull! What a royal fuckin’ doofus !’

Ransom wipes his mouth with the palm of his hand and then burps, majestically. ‘That poor fucker was totally duped back there!’

‘You reckon?’ Jen’s understandably sceptical.

‘Yeah. Yeah . Absolutely …’ Ransom chuckles, vindictively. ‘He didn’t have the first friggin’ clue .’

‘I dunno.’ Jen’s still not buying it. ‘Gene’s a whole lot smarter than you think. Could just be one of those double-bluff scenarios …’

But Ransom’s not listening. His eyes de-focus for a second, and then, ‘My God !’ he erupts. ‘What a performance ! You were completely friggin’ nuts back there! You were truly demented!’

Jen merely smiles.

‘And the stuff about selfish sports was a fuckin’ master stroke!’ Ransom continues. ‘It was brilliant! Insane! How the hell’d you just spontaneously come up with all that shit?’

‘I’m a genius.’ Jen shrugs.

‘ Ha! ’ Ransom grins at her, grotesquely, like an overheating bull terrier in dire need of water.

‘No joke,’ Jen says, firmly, ‘I am a genius. I have an IQ of 210 …’

‘Pull the other one!’

Ransom kicks out his foot. ‘It’s got bells on!’

‘… which is apparently the exact-same score as that scientist guy,’ Jen elaborates.

‘Who? Einstein? ’ Ransom quips.

Jen thinks hard for a moment. ‘Stephen Hoskins …? Hokings? Hawkwing?’

Pause.

‘Hawking?’ Ransom suggests.

‘The one who wrote that book about … uh …’

‘Time travel. A Brief History of Time . Stephen Hawking.’

‘Yeah. Yeah . Stephen Hawkwing. We have the same —’

‘Haw- king ,’ Ransom interrupts.

‘Pardon?’

‘Haw- king . You keep saying Hawk- wing , but it’s actually …’

‘I’m crap with names,’ Jen sighs. ‘People automatically assume that I’ll have this amazing memory just because I’m super-brainy, but I don’t. My short-term memory is completely shot. I’m not “clever” at all — at least not in any practical sense of the word. I’m intellectual , yes — hyper -intellectual, even — but I’m definitely not clever. The embarrassing truth about intellectuals is that we can be amazingly dense sometimes. And clumsy. And insensitive. And really, really tactless. And incredibly forgetful,’ she sighs. ‘It just goes with the territory. Remember Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind ?’

‘I saw it on a plane,’ the golfer murmurs, eyeing her, suspiciously, ‘ twice . But I fell asleep both times.’

‘Because our brains are generally operating at such a high level,’ Jen expands, ‘that we simply don’t have the space up there for all these reams and reams of more conventional data …’

The golfer gazes at her, perplexed, noting, as he does so, a slight, pinkened area — almost a gentle chapping — on her upper lip. This idle observation sends a frisson of excitement from his inside knee to his thigh.

‘… data relating to, say — I dunno — table manners,’ Jen rambles on, ‘or road safety, or basic personal hygiene. Take me, for example,’ she expands, ‘I actually started reading Aristotle when I was five — in the original Greek. By seven I’d discovered that a particular chemical component in bananas advances the ripening processes in other fruits. A tiny fact, something people just take for granted nowadays. But it was a huge revelation at the time — had a massive impact on the wine and fruit export industries …’ She shrugs. ‘I got my English language GCSE when I was eight, maths A-level when I was nine. But I was actually twelve years of age before I was successfully toilet-trained.’

‘ Wuh?! ’

Ransom’s horrified.

‘And I never learned to tell the time.’ She points to her wrist. ‘Couldn’t ever really master it, somehow. I just thank God the world had the good sense to go digital …’ She fondly inspects her watch, notices a tiny smear on its face and then casually buffs it clean on her breast (Ransom observes these proceedings with copious levels of interest).

‘Even tying my own shoelaces was a nightmare,’ Jen continues. ‘At school I always wore trainers with Velcro flaps …’

She illustrates this poignant detail with a little mime. Halfway through, though, Ransom clambers to his feet, reaches over the counter, grabs her arm and yanks her, unceremoniously, towards him.

She squeals, half-resisting. He ignores her protests, roughly twists her wrist and pulls the newly buffed timepiece right up close to his face. He inspects it for several seconds, his breathing laboured.

‘You manipulative little cow ,’ he eventually mutters.