Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘As a couple?’

Victoria shrugs.

‘But he knew about …?’

‘She told him. Apparently he just laughed. Brushed it off. Didn’t believe it was his. Gave me two hundred dollars for an abortion. Left it in an envelope with the folk on reception.’

‘How awful!’ Sheila’s appalled. ‘Did you actually follow through with it?’

Victoria shakes her head. ‘I’m waiting for my appointment at a local clinic and the doctor is running late for some reason. There’s a pretty, beige girl sitting three chairs along with a septic wound on her finger. She’s a Borrincano —’

‘Bori …?’ Sheila interrupts.

‘From Puerto Rico. Turns out she injured her finger releasing a hawksbill.’

‘Is that a kind of bird?’

‘No, a turtle. It was trapped in a fishing net. She’s a marine biologist, an ecologist. Anyhow, to cut a very long story short, we started to chat and …’ She shrugs. ‘Marisol picked me up, brushed me down, read me the riot act and completely turned my life around.’

‘You kept the baby?’

Sheila’s eyes are suddenly prickling (this tale is — to all intents and purposes — her tale).

Vicki nods. ‘Marisol was a strict Catholic — ten years older, well educated, politically savvy. She was in on the ground floor with the WAGM — spoke at one of their first, international conferences —’

‘The WA …?’

‘World Anti-Golf Movement. This huge course had been built on a string of coral islands just adjacent to one of her main research posts. The impact of the thing — water depletion, toxic contamination of the reef with pesticides, fungicides and weedicides, the adoption of landscaped, foreign eco-systems and plants, the raft of new diseases this brought to the indigenous surrounds —’

‘You bonded over your hatred of a common enemy!’ Sheila interrupts, grinning.

Victoria scowls, irritated. ‘Marisol opened my eyes — taught me to look at the world from a completely fresh perspective — became my mentor — encouraged me back into part-time education — helped organize a USAID scholarship — supported me all the way through law school. It wasn’t just a matter of —’

‘But if it hadn’t been for that golfer …’ Sheila persists.

‘You think I should be grateful?!’ Victoria snaps.

‘No. No …’ Sheila realizes that she needs to tread carefully, here, ‘but you should always be honest — especially with yourself, and with your reader, by extension.’

Victoria sucks on her tongue, annoyed. ‘Why? So it can look like everything I am, everything I believe in, everything I’ve achieved in the Deep Green movement, against all the odds — as a poor, young, black woman and a single mother — was just part of some … some petty, little teenage vendetta? Nah- ah . No way. Because — trust me — this man doesn’t deserve the credit — none of it — nor the publicity for that matter.’

‘Okay … okay …’ Sheila gently concedes the point, then carefully considers her response for a second, her eyes soft and unfocused. ‘Okay, so how about — purely on pragmatic grounds, for the sake of the book, and your blood-pressure — you try and put a slightly different, slightly less defensive spin on it …’ She pushes her sandwich aside, decisively (as if thereby creating an open arena for free, intellectual exchange). ‘Stop seeing that particular phase of your life as a private humiliation, a personal disaster, a critical mis-judgement on your part and start seeing it as … as a message, a kind of fable; something with universal relevance; a metaphor, a sort of … of paradigm , almost. You were the island that he conquered and then exploited. Your baby was the waste to be casually disposed of … Yes, he was a pig — of course he was, it’s patently obvious — it goes without saying, and because it goes without saying there’s really no need to say it, or to think it, or to feel it, even. So rise above. Take the higher path. Be magnanimous. Maybe go one step further, and admit that the experience actually taught you something. It was a hard lesson, sure, but it was a true beginning. He was the piece of grit in the mouth of an oyster that turned — with Marisol’s guidance and your raw determination — into a pearl.’

Victoria opens her mouth, scowling, and starts to say something.

‘Don’t worry that you’re giving him too much credit, either,’ Sheila interrupts, hand raised, ‘because what happened with him was just a starting point, nothing more; a seed was planted but it took the soil and the rain and the light and the sun to create a flower. Approached from that angle, with that attitude — you know, benign dispassion; cheerful indifference — all ideas of vengeance, of a long-term vendetta or of petty revenge just seem absolutely irrelevant. They simply don’t figure. They aren’t even on the radar.’

Victoria — lips pressed back together again (with some considerable effort on her part) — ponders what’s been said in a quizzical silence, one brow slightly raised, her skinny index finger drawing a looping hem into the condensation along the top of her glass.

‘How does Marisol feel about the book?’ Sheila wonders, her eyes following Victoria’s finger as it gracefully loops. ‘What’s her advice been?’

Victoria’s finger stops looping, slowly drops, then rests quietly on the table, a thin coating of moisture on the pad briefly conjoining her soft flesh to the lacquered surface.

‘Marisol …’ she starts off, then her voice wavers. She closes her eyes for a moment, draws a deep breath, clears her throat (as if irritated by this unexpected show of vulnerability) and tries once again: ‘Marisol died in 2003, from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma …’ Her voice sounds clipped this time around, almost dispassionate. ‘It’s a disease often associated with pesticides — kills golf managers and farm workers. She was diagnosed in the July and died five weeks later.’

‘My God, I’m so sorry,’ Sheila interjects, horrified.

Victoria shrugs. ‘I was heavily involved in the anti-globalization protests that year — spent several months working at Vandana Shiva’s Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy at the foot of the Himalayas. It was an incredibly productive time for me — an amazing time — an activist’s dream come true …’ She pauses, pressing her lips together again, her nostrils flaring. ‘Of course I knew there were some problems with Marisol’s health …’ she murmurs, her voice softer, now, ‘there’d been a number of scares since the RAMSAR wetlands campaign — all that contact with raw sewage — but I never thought …’

‘Were you still together?’

Victoria shakes her head. ‘We were never a “real” couple, not in any formal sense — we both moved around so much, were so caught up in Deep Green issues, mine chiefly developmental, hers much more marine based — but we were definitely soul mates. Her parents never knew she was bi — still don’t. They’re very traditional people, very respectable. They’d be crushed to find out.’

Sheila ponders this for a while. ‘So in terms of the book …’

‘My boy has no clue who his father is’ — Victoria grimaces — ‘and I have no intention of telling him, either.’

‘You don’t think he has a right to know?’ Sheila’s surprised.

‘He thinks he’s dead.’ Victoria shrugs.

‘You told him that?’ Sheila’s shocked.

‘Yup.’ Victoria nods, unrepentant.

‘And he doesn’t … he doesn’t suspect?’

‘Nope.’

‘How about the father? I mean if he’s still in a relationship with …?’

‘Esther told him I had the abortion. It just seemed easier. We made an uneasy truce: I help keep an eye on her kids back in Jamaica and she keeps her mouth firmly shut.’