Nicola Barker - Five Miles from Outer Hope

I clear my throat and stab a hunk of celery on to the end of my fork. ‘La Roux here was only telling me the other day how much he admires hens,’ I say.

‘My,’ Big mutters, ‘how absolutely fascinating. ’

Patch sniggers. I kick her under the table. She winces.

‘I couldn’t help wondering, La Roux,’ she then suddenly pipes up (like the shrillest kind of cheap penny whistle), ‘how it feels to be part of a white supremacist minority?’

La Roux stops chewing and frowns for a minute. ‘Believe it or not,’ he answers, after a short, slightly painful duration, ‘I had absolutely no inkling that was the set up here. But I’m certain…’ he smiles widely, ‘that I’ll get in to the swing of things once I’m fully adjusted.’

He takes another mouthful, looks up at the ceiling and chews on it piously. Patch emits a small, trumped growl, while under the table I feel that moist ginger victor push his bony knee even harder against mine. I try and shift sideways, but to no avail.

Feely, meanwhile, has begun staring again. This time Big notices. ‘It’s rude to stare, Feely,’ he barks. ‘I suggest you get on with eating.’

Feely dutifully picks up a spoon, scoops a mouthful of spinach onto it, pops it between his lips, knocks it back like a bitter pill and swallows it whole. The spinach goes two gentle rounds with his troublesome tonsils then picks a real fight with his unwelcoming oesophagus. The result? He starts choking.

Patch — the girl’s on constant standby for this kind of drama — slaps his back with the flat of her hand. Hard . And that bastard Four Year Old promptly coughs up this unobliging green nugget straight down and out and on to the table.

Urgh.

‘How many times’, Big asks, his voice suddenly sharp-bladed as a Stanley , ‘are you expected to chew your food before swallowing?’

I open my mouth to answer but Big silences me. ‘Not you, Medve. I’m asking Feely.’

Feely scratches his nose, rolls his eyes and doesn’t utter a word, let alone a number .

‘How many times, Feely?’

‘Uh,’ Feely stares at the recently expelled blob of spinach. ‘Three hundred and fifty times,’ he guesses.

‘Thirty-six times,’ Big says, ‘is what dieticians generally recommend.’

He reaches out his hand, plucks the gobbet of spinach from the table-top, pulls down Feely’s chin, pops it in, closes his mouth and says, ‘Thirty-six times. Let’s count together, shall we?’

He glances around the table. ‘Shall we? La Roux? Medve? Patch? Shall we?’

Everybody nods, sullenly but en masse .

‘Right, let’s all take a mouthful…’ He places a half-red-onion between his lips, smiling. We all do likewise, but sans smile.

‘ And ,’ he chews once, then speaks. ‘One!’ Chews a second time. ‘Two!’ A third time. ‘Three!’

So it continues.

‘ Swallow! ’ he bellows, on thirty-six.

We all swallow. Then he takes a second random scoop of something and starts right on over from scratch again (In truth, I don’t think he’s even really enjoying this pointless piece of power-play. It’s as if he’s cheerfully relating a dirty joke to a random stranger he just met at a party, only to suddenly discover, pre-filthy-punchline, that the man in question is a vicar. But he tells the joke anyway. He’s in too deep , if you get my meaning).

Big’s voice, as he counts, is harsh as wire wool, but his poor face is ashen, his eyes are bulging and his two cheeks are moist as Bobby Ewing’s handshake. One to thirty-six. We follow, we swallow. And then, would you believe it, this under-sized but extra-zealous human calculator ratchets himself up a third time over.

It can’t last. And it doesn’t. At formal chew number ninety-seven, Big stops, takes a huge, strangled breath, pushes his plate away — knocking the jug of lemon water flying — pulls himself heavily to his feet and storms from the room. I’m talking mid-count, mid-mouthful, mid- everything .

For a while nobody dares to swallow. Then La Roux puts his fork down, spits a mashed-up glob of something unspeakable on to his plate, and mournfully inspects his soaking lap.

‘I feel a little nauseous,’ he whispers.

‘ Poor Big,’ Patch sighs, matter-of-factly, bone dry herself and already scooping up a brand new forkful, ‘it’s all the fault of that damn telegram.’

Feely sniffs, kicks his feet together and quietly watches the lemon liquid trickle in a waterfall from the slats to the floor, while (with exceptional stealth and surreptitiousness), just inches away on the opposite underside of that tiny table, La Roux silently places his only remaining dry four fingers and thumb down so gently onto my soggy thigh that it’s like a moth landing, then squeezes me there — once, twice — for a few brief seconds.

How do I react? I don’t react. What do I do? I don’t do anything . You see, I’m much too busy staring up and out of that old ship’s porthole and fervently wishing — just for a moment — that I could cast myself off from this whole infuriatingly trying biological misalliance, straighten my jib, unfurl my sails, head straight for that true, blue horizon and float blissfully away.

Who do I think I’m kidding?

Yeah? And what if I happen to like his hand there, anyway?

Big, it later transpires, has stormed off to the mainland (so no prizes for guessing whose turn it was to do the dishes today). Luckily La Roux helps out with the post-lunch chores. Patch washes, he dries. I supervise with half an eye as I cut a very sulky Feely’s fingernails, having promised faithfully to read him something cheery when this grim odyssey is over.

La Roux and Patch, I observe (above the white blotches of Feely’s chronic calcium deficiency) are getting on like a house on fire. He has subdued her in some indefinable way (So they share the same landing: it was inevitable they’d grow familiar , if only on the basis of forced proximity, but what I’m seeing here is something quite beyond the ordinary).

As I quietly sit (literally transfixed by this two-faced rusted fox’s well-honed Machiavellian spooning — and he’s drying the cutlery! It’s all too perfect!), I watch him effortlessly cementing Patch’s easy affections with a most maddening new game he quickly devises.

Whenever she seems in danger of leaving the room for some random reason (to hang out a dishcloth or empty the rubbish), La Roux will suddenly bellow, ‘ Patch! No! Don’t go!’ as though his heart will break if she even so much as considers withdrawing.

Every time he tries this gambit (and she’s a mobile little monkey with an exceptionally weak bladder), the girl pauses, blushes, falters, then slowly starts cackling. She practically laps up the attention. It’s all so embarrassing . (Not to mention galling; I’ve seen feral cats more sincere than this fucker.)

When they’ve finally got around to completing the dishes (with so much billing and cooing it gets to feeling like a bloody pigeon loft in that kitchen: I mean bullshit and feathers right up to the rafters), La Roux suddenly decides that he wants Patch to cut his hair.

He plumps himself down on a stool — just one place along from sulky Feely — and asks for the scissors.

‘These are nail scissors,’ I tell him, passing them over.

He completely ignores me (right, so I’m Plague Girl now, all of a sudden?) and gently entrusts the blades into Patch’s keen, plump fingers.

‘While you’re cutting,’ he tells her, ‘I’ll just sit back, relax, and listen in on Feely’s story.’