Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

Doesn’t look good, does it? Especially to a cat lover.

La Roux can’t say much as Ms Smolly gasps, curses, turns and scampers, but he does say something (credit him at least with the genius of brevity). In fact he says two things: the first is, ‘This is not as bad as it seems. I actually know this animal.’ The second? ‘My father’s a gynaecologist.’

Virtually a life history, really, when all the silly woman actually wanted — or needed — was a rather more basic but nonetheless suitably cringing apology.

More fool she.

Oh dear . I duly deputize myself to mediate a peace between the two warring parties (that’s Big and The Masturbator — Ms Penny Smolly having hissy-fitted and high-tailed it almost immediately after).

To say Big is cross hardly does proper justice to his colossal rage. Don’t get me wrong. The man is not against masturbation per se . He simply thinks there’s a time and a place. And This Time and This Place just don’t happen to be it.

He’s probably right. To try and calm him down I back him up assiduously, I chip in gamely, I parrot, I chirrup, I echo. Mrs Mary Whitehouse herself would’ve been hard-pressed to find a spare ounce of moral laxity in me.

Of course I have motives ulterior .

We happen to be conducting this particular conversation ensconced downstairs in the ladies’ loo, accompanied by Feely, who is squirming on the tiling like a greased pig in a pie shop. The cold-water tap is gushing and we are struggling to hold his rapidly purpling paw beneath it. I am in charge of the mug-end, Big is in charge of his wrist, Feely is in charge of absolutely nothing, his foul temper included.

‘La Roux’s plainly demented,’ I tell Big, turning the tap on a little harder, ‘even muskrats have better instincts.’

Big stares at me suspiciously and then shakes his head. He’s small but he’s on the ball. He plainly smells something. My odious perfidy, probably.

‘So who cares ’, I continue, ‘if his stupid father delivered Feely? What does it matter? That was four whole years ago. And look what a nightmarish liability he turned into.’

I give the mug a twist and a yank. Feely yowls. It loosens a fraction. I push it under the tap again. My stomach is soaking.

Big adjusts his position. ‘Why not give me a break’, he growls, ‘from your pathetic attempts at reverse psychology? You seem to forget that I’m the same old man who spends his time watching that ginger moron Denis Waterman displaying five times your level of clumsy fudge in The bloody Sweeney.’

My head snaps back. ‘Waterman’s a blonde,’ I gurgle.

‘From where I’m standing’, Big continues, ‘it’s very clear that this devious South African has somehow managed — no conspired — to win you over. Heaven alone knows how or why, but he’s done it.’

Well I never. I’m so astonished by Big’s unexpected gust of insight that my grip momentarily relaxes. He notices. ‘Don’t let up,’ he grumbles, ‘keep trying. I think it’s finally coming.’

I still don’t react. He peers up at me, morosely.

‘Uh… that’s probably exactly what Penny Smolly was thinking,’ I splutter.

Big does not smile. He’s struggling to keep Feely’s wrist firm. Feely has helpfully removed all the weight from his feet and is now just poignantly dangling. I get into gear and twist again. As I do so I feel a very gradual easing. Then pop ! It’s out.

Not his hand, unfortunately, but his shoulder bone, which slips from its socket with all the smooth ease of a bloated bee from a bluebell. Except not nearly so quietly. In fact the astonishing howl this four year old promptly delivers would strike envy into the hearts of a hundred-strong convention of Primal Screamers. He literally bellows .

Yikes! We both drop him so fast it’s like he’s suddenly on fire, and the poor kid’s barely hit the floor (with a bang) before he’s up on his feet again and hopping around the ladies like a badly-injured baby ape, his entire right arm and shoulder hanging completely off-kilter. It’s hideous .

Big (always an ass in a crisis) flies into an immediate panic. The tide’s in. The tractor’s out. How the heck will we manage to get the doctor over? I’m still pathetically fumbling to turn that damn tap off like a sweaty-pawed, slack-jawed, cack-handed water lover (like father, like daughter). All is chaos.

Then suddenly something rather magnificent happens. As if from nowhere (okay, it seems likely the little pervert was hiding in a cubicle all the while, but I only actually realize this after), La Roux crashes into our crazy-palpitating, terror-struck environs, catches a firm hold of Feely, slams him down onto the floor, straightens his back, grabs his shoulder, gets him to count to three, applies a monumentally well-judged amount of force (but only very briefly) to the offending region, and then click , manages to shunt that pesky bone straight back into its socket again.

The whole affair takes approximately seven seconds. In fact the drama’s all over so quickly that Feely can’t help feeling a fraction disgruntled and yanks the plastic mug off his fist just to facilitate his socking La Roux a firm blow with it.

La Roux takes his thrashing like a man (upon his knee — he’s standing already), folds his arms anxiously across his puny chest (in the intimidating face of Big’s astonished gaze) and says — his tone almost apologetic — ‘I trained as a medic in the South African Army.’

Army?

‘Somebody, somewhere trusted this misfit with a firearm ?’

(So I thought I was just thinking , but in the heat of the moment I find my mouth is moving and I am actually speaking .)

La Roux sticks out his chin. ‘I said I was a medic ,’ he repeats. ‘My most essential weapons — aside from my trusty pill box and my hypodermic syringe — were my natural cunning, my fierce intelligence…’ he pauses, ‘… and my cast-iron stomach, obviously.’

Feely takes this rather appropriate opportunity to deal him a further well-aimed blow, then drops the mug, sits down squarely on the cold tiles and commences a brand-new (and very lengthy) phase of uninhibited howling.

Big, clucking like a mother hen, bends over to pick him up. I turn briefly to try and wring out my soaking skirt (wool’s so appallingly absorbent, don’t you find?), and when I finally chance to glance his way again, our diabolical hero — sweet and silent as a dark Red Admiral on a soft sea breeze — has bashfully flitted.

Hell’s bells. Events are certainly progressing at a fair old whack: especially strategically . I mean, one minute things are looking rather bleak for that cheerfully conniving South African buffoon, and then, in the very next instant, his fortunes have altered course completely.

It’s like a critical scene in a TV drama where the character you couldn’t help liking the best suddenly turns out to be the self-same bastard who viciously murdered his best friend’s budgerigar. Only back to front (which would have to make him the person you like least offering a timely portion of mouth-to-beak resuscitation).

Oh, liven up , you know what I mean.

Initially it’s rather difficult to gauge the subtle shifts and slides in La Roux’s general household popularity. Patch — having been anything from lacklustre to indifferent previous to the Feely disaster — now thinks the sun shines out of this medically trained impostor’s most intimate orifice.

Big has been briefly — if not entirely convincingly — won over. Feely — now here’s the weird part — having liked La Roux from the outset, suddenly can’t bear to catch the slightest whiff of him. And me? I liked the fool before, and now I love him ever more dearly.