Five Miles From Outer Hope (7 page)

I grit my teeth. I steady my feet. I clear my throat. I
balance
internally. Then: ‘My
God,’
I whisper gently, my face a profoundly sympathetic mask of quite the
tenderest
bewilderment. ‘La Roux, my
God
! It’s so very
ugly.
And tiny too,
really
tiny.’

His smile falters. And while it’s faltering, with a single hefty kick from my huge left hoof I shove that ginger-haired and deeply perverted mother-fucker straight down, head first, into the water.

You know what? In my trivial pursuit of the fine 1980s Free Enterprise Ethic, I’m seriously considering establishing my very own International Library of Gullibility – kind of along the same lines as The School of Hard Knocks, but warmer, and friendlier and with unlimited lending.

Think there’s any future in it? Better still, fancy
joining
?

Chapter 9

Don’t ask me why, but I suddenly feel like the time is prime to get something rather
hefty
off my 38B (that’s my chest measurement, you
booby
), both on behalf of my huge-hoofed self and my dilapidated family.

Unorthodox we may well be. Laughing-stocks? Certainly. Eccentric? Eclectic? Erratic? Entopic? (We can do all the ‘e’s without even
blinking.
)

Yeah
, so we’re the first to chuckle at our own endless inadequacies, but when everything’s finally said and done, we still take great umbrage at the insulting suggestion that we’re completely
obsessed
by crass anality (I mean, did I even yet make
mention
of my capacious anus?).
^*

It just so happens that there are some things, some… how to put it?… some
cracks
in the plaster, some
issues
(Big’s gut, his pedantry, my mail-order addiction, Poodle’s tiny breasts, Barge’s beet-boiling) which just won’t budge or shift no matter how hard or how diligently you try to paper them over. And that
anus probus
, I fear, is clearly no exception.

Right. So
I know
it’s a subject which we have all – so far and so
assiduously –
been avoiding, but when it actually comes down to it the only real problem with Mo’s mighty invention is that there
is
no real problem (and I have a powerful teenage yen for exaggeration).

The Anal Probe –
Sick
, you’re thinking?
Weird? Shameful?

Saucy? Problematic? Traumatic?
Nah! I know it sounds crazy, but the inescapably tedious truth of the matter is that the Probe is nothing more creepy or glorious than an actual-factual, down-to-earth, dull-as-dishwater metal detector: a plain plastic chair (and there’s nothing remotely
invasive
) which, when you sit down upon it, kindly informs a disinterested observer whether there’s anything
remiss
clenched inside your cavities (and I don’t exactly mean your
teeth
here, either).

Mo says the results are nothing short of fantastic. During a trial run in Idaho’s main female prison one woman was apprehended with six razor blades lodged inside her vagina, all neatly wrapped in a small, neat sheath of protective plastic (some indication – if any were needed – of the sheer lengths these girls will go to to avoid unsightly stubble).

Not only an absolute boon for the prison authorities, a smart innovation and a serious time-saver, the Probe also – in
real
terms – means a serious reduction in rubber-glove expenditure (
Lord!
To hear me flog this pony you’d think I was on commission). And last, but certainly not least, it’s a
huge
potential money-spinner for my dear mother Mo and her shifty, lily-livered, liberally inclined, financial and ideological partner, Bob Ranger.

(I’d rather not dwell, if you don’t mind, on the tough early days of this fine device’s preparatory testing regimen. Just whisper the dread words
metal pessary
within earshot and my eyes begin watering – although, on the upside, my powerful vaginal muscles could choke a weasel.)

And that, as they say, is basically the sum of it. So how’s about we all try and set our sordid minds to finally putting this whole damn Probe thing
behind
us?

Ah-hah-
hem
. If you get my meaning.

Talk about a whole host of
weird shit
. I’ve hardly set a well-turned toe back inside the hotel foyer again before Little Big Man lunges out unexpectedly from behind a ludicrously monumental translucent pink glass statue of Diana the Huntress (a goddess with huskies. For some reason they seemed to
dote
on this crazy broad way back in the thirties. I’m uncertain of her eighties status, but whenever we’re engulfed by a spot of DIY chaos, Diana’s always the first thing to split the scene on a series of specially-adapted squeaky castors. The girl’s an ancient, godly, dog-infested, iced-glass
absconder
).

He grabs a tight hold of me and spirits me off into a quiet corner. He has a deranged air, Polyfilla-coated fingers and is clutching a telegram from our dear mother Mo. He hands it over (there’s hardly any sticky residue) and kindly but firmly obliges me to read it.

Here’s what it says:

‘J. H.? Who’s that, then?’ I ask stupidly, once I’ve carefully completed my scrupulous re-reading.

Big scowls. ‘Abbott. The mass murderer. The
writer
.’

I make the connection. ‘Ah, you mean…’

‘Yes. And that’s another thing,’ Big rapidly continues (having failed to tell me the first thing first), ‘I don’t need Patch filling her silly head with a pointless heap of anti-establishment propaganda. I need you to get that book off her.’

‘And then what?’ I chortle. ‘
Burn
it?’

He’s so pent-up, he can’t even tell I’m joking. He just nods his agreement and then suddenly stiffens. ‘Just do something for once,’ he yells, ‘without
bloody arguing
.’

I stare down at him for a moment. He seems barely recognizable.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say plaintively, ‘but I can’t help feeling like I’m not
getting
something.’

(I mean, either the man’s displacing for some reason or his fuse has sparked out and short-circuited his sanity.) He frowns for a minute, then shrugs, then shakes his head. ‘I miss Barge,’ he mutters weakly, touching his hands to his temples and inadvertently war-painting them. ‘And I miss Poodle. It’s nothing against you, nothing
personal
, they’re just that tiny little bit older and, well,
wiser
.’

He indicates a short inch between his thumb and his index finger (This is
Barge
we’re talking about: a twenty-three-year-old man wholly incapable of expressing himself artistically in anything even
loosely
amounting to 3D, an atheist
pumpkin
, a salivating
ninny
).

Yeah. Thanks a bunch. So I’m sixteen years young, criminally undervalued and
hurting
, but I still take the requisite time out to carefully re-inspect that unenlightening telegram.

‘I don’t quite understand the South African thing. Strong arm
who
for money? Does she mean La Roux? Is he loaded or something?’

Big takes a deep breath. ‘Not La Roux. She means his father.’

‘Uh…’ I frown. ‘Sorry. I’m still not following.’

He snatches the telegram and carefully refolds it. ‘La Roux’s staying here illegally,’ he whispers, all
sotto. ‘
He’s meant to be fighting in a war with Angola. He’s AWOL. He’s done a runner.’

‘La Roux fighting a
war
?’ I bellow, and then instantly start sniggering. ‘
La Roux?
Perhaps it’s just me, but I find it rather difficult to picture a big…’ (I pause, and scrabble) ‘… a big
goose
like him engaged in violent hand to hand conflict with
anybody
, let alone the marshalled armed forces of an entire British colony.’

(In my mind I have a sudden vision of La Roux in his strangely structured trousers and Appaloosan pony sweater thumbing his nose idly at ten thousand well-armed Angolan warriors. It’s a huge
joke.
It must be.)

Big waves his hand. ‘It’s an ex-
German
colony, if you must know, and more in the style of a guerilla conflict,’ he says airily, as if this explains everything.

‘Wow,’ I muse. ‘Real guerillas? How wonderfully
African
.’

Big spends a difficult thirty seconds struggling to comprehend my position. And then, when he thinks he’s finally got it (I’m just a scab he’s idly peeling), the tight set of his expression implies that it’s a standpoint hardly
worth
comprehending.

‘Perhaps you might bear in mind’, he snipes meanly, ‘that there’s nothing remotely
wonderful
about evading your duties, bludging off complete strangers, masturbating at will and strong-arming miniature guitars from defenceless children.’

‘
Bludging?
’ I blink anxiously at Big’s ferocity. ‘I thought you just said his dad was paying.’

‘And another thing,’ Big adds, ignoring my sneaky intervention, ‘and it’s something you might do well to try and remember…’ (I hold my breath and listen, appalled, as always, to be in the direct firing line of a parental pronouncement.) ‘There’s nothing more
sickening
’, he growls emphatically, ‘than the spectre of science
parading
as morality.’

He pauses dramatically. ‘Remember the nuclear bomb?’

I nod.

‘Remember the electric chair?’

I kick the wall, gently.

‘When you start combining ethics and science, no matter how clever you are or how worthy your intentions, you invariably end up sharing an agenda with the likes of Doctor Mengele.’

I widen my eyes, coquettishly. ‘And is that a
good
thing?’

He stares at me, briefly, then puts his hand to his stomach, winces, and heads, at speed, towards the downstairs toilet.

Uh-
oh.
The ulcer.

As soon as Big’s off barfing, I start sniffing around for my little sister. Because y
ou
know and
I
know that every demon twelve year old that ever yet filled their mean lungs with free oxygen on God’s Great Earth has a set of ears on them like a radar-rigged, sound-sensitive hyena.

And that scurrilous Patch is truly no exception (put it this way: if ever you’re having a private conversation – if
confidences
are quietly being exchanged – then that fat brat will almost certainly be skulking somewhere within earshot).

In this instance I don’t even have to look any real distance to unearth her. She’s secreted snugly inside the hotel lift (100 per cent out of service) earwigging like a hyperactive Sugar Glider (a nocturnal Antipodean tree rat. Have you
never
thought of investing in the
National Geographic
?).

Feely is crammed in there with her, pressing at the buttons (for all the damn good it’s doing him). I yank the door open and peer in at them through the metal shutter.

‘So I need an opinion on this weird telegram,’ I tell her. ‘Fancy providing one?’

She frowns, unhelpfully. ‘I’ve got a pot of dhal boiling dry on the cooker. Might you consider making do, for the time being, with a list of recommended reading matter?’ (The girl’s such a
swot
.)

‘Hmmmn. What volumes do you have in mind, specifically?’

She thinks for a moment. ‘Uh… a social and political history of apartheid South Africa, for starters. Something short by Desmond Wilcox on human behaviour.
The Female Eunuch
– Germaine Greer.’

‘Any Thurber?’

She shakes her head.

‘Marilyn French,
The Women’s Room
?’

The twelve year old sneers. ‘So fucking
seventies
!’

‘And
Jack Henry Abbott
?’ I enunciate clearly.

She scowls. ‘To call him a mass murderer! I mean the sheer
prejudice
of the man! He simply killed one con and seriously injured another in an act of absolutely
righteous
self-defence. Then the bastards slapped him with a
maximum sentence…’

‘Before you go on and break my heart completely,’ I intervene, ‘Mo says he got early probation last Friday.’

This emphatic sprout looks briefly delighted, then she frowns. ‘So,’ she sighs tiredly, ‘Big still thinks Mo’s screwing Bob Ranger, then?’

I nod. ‘The man’s such a pathetic
Sultan
. Did you hear his crazy “don’t mix science and morality” speech?’

She sniggers. ‘Good job you didn’t bring up the invention of penicillin. That would’ve really
fucked
with his logic.’

‘In truth,’ I lie, ‘I seriously thought about it.’

She pulls herself together and glances regretfully down at little Feely. ‘Well, I guess I’d better start thinking about getting back to the kitchens.’

I step sideways. ‘Make sure lunch is something digestible. Big-Man-No-Stomach is definitely on the warpath.’

She pulls open the metal gate. ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing…’ she says, sliding quickly on past me.

I raise my brow. ‘So pray
tell
.’

As she trundles towards the downstairs kitchens, yanking Feely like a small teddy behind her, she tosses some crucial information over her pudgy shoulder. ‘Angola, you fucking
moron
, is a
Portuguese
colony.’

On the stairs I hear her smartly asking, ‘I mean, what is
up
with that girl’s history?’

But from where I’m standing, diplomatic little Feely isn’t heard to answer.

*
My
capacious anus
?! Wise
up
, you blimp.

Chapter 10

La Roux has this absolutely
infuriating
way of eating. How to describe it? Instead of using his molars for chewing and grinding – like the Good Lord intended – he much prefers to employ his incisors (the sharp, foreteeth, principally designed to bite and to cut) for the main body of his masticatory work.

It’s a very messy business: try and imagine a scenario where his thin lips and his sharp tongue are constantly at battle for the ultimate custody of his overall eating process (with his chin and his shirt-front this squalid dispute’s main casualty), or simply visualize an eerie but rather noisy mixture of sucking and muttering (an irritable fruit bat harshly reprimanding an encroaching tree snake whilst simultaneously laying waste to an overripe fig). Either way, it’s pretty
gruesome
.

Obviously, as far as Feely’s concerned, La Roux’s complex and unusual ingestive routine is
completely
mesmerizing. And even Patch’s extremely cynical, grub-loving eyes can sometimes be seen to leave the precious confines of her own high-piled plate and to flitter, inquisitively, towards La Roux’s voluble but hard-working mandibles.

On my many world-wide travels, I was once privileged to witness some freshwater piranha frenziedly devouring a baby stork who’d fallen from his nest on high – most tragically – and down into the cruelly infested water below. From brand-new flesh, keen squawk, bright eye and fine feather to bare, pale beak and chalky bone, the whole stripping and dismantling process took less than twelve brief seconds.

Unfortunately for us, La Roux is not blessed with quite this high level of digestive efficiency. He tends to take just
a little
longer.

So it’s lunch-time, and we’re all perched – shoved up close, like house-martins on a phone line – thigh against thigh upon two small benches (La Roux and I on one side, Feely and Patch on the other: Big is yet to join us), our elbows clashing like unwieldy, flesh-tipped fencing swords as we struggle for territory around the tiny, thick-slatted, fold-up table which has been temporarily situated by pesky Patch in the creaking bow of that big-beamed, portholed Ganges Room for the short duration of our lunching.

We are consuming a veritable feast of cold bottled, well-preserved winter vegetables: whole beet, dark spinach, red onions, fibrous celery, sweet potatoes. Served with warm dhal made from leeks and red lentils. Natural yoghurt. Unleavened bread – some strange, ill-formed, oily
paratha
, badly wound into snail-shell-curls by the clumsy hands of little Feely.

Big joins us once we’ve already begun to apportion, squabble and guzzle, carrying a tray of five clay mugs and a jug of water cut with salt and fresh lemon. He places it on the table and squeezes in next to Feely. Feely shunts along resentfully, whining like a disgruntled chihuahua.

From the corner of my eye (full-blown visual contact has, as yet, been carefully avoided: to meet an angry animal’s gaze is
always
dangerous and I’m still keenly fearing a random strike of sudden retribution), La Roux’s hair seems unusually feathered-up and wispy (I guess the sun must’ve dried it), but the rest of him hasn’t remained quite so unaffected by his earlier misadventure.

My rapid glances detect traces of damp around his armpits and (
a-hem
) his fly. He has his favourite twig with him, however, caught and held between his bony knees.

‘So what happened to your back?’ Big asks, casually, picking up a spoon and dipping it into his dhal. We all look up. La Roux blinks. ‘
My
back?’ he asks, as if certain Big must be making conversation with another, far more significant individual.

‘Well, nobody else at this table, so far as I’ve noticed,’ Big observes drily, ‘has an extra-large, weed-green footprint on their sweater.’

He leans out on the bench and stares – just for effect – at the un-printed backs of Patch and Feely.

‘Nope. No bigfoots there.’

La Roux twists his head to try and peer over his own shoulder. Then he stops trying and takes a large and evasive mouthful of beetroot. ‘I can only imagine’, he speaks with crimson-lipped muffledness, ‘that I must’ve been kicked unexpectedly.’

‘And why, I wonder, might anyone have felt the urge to do
that
?’ Big asks (the tone of his voice strongly implying that there could be few activities in the whole world he himself might relish more).

La Roux shrugs and then shoots a mean sideways glance at me. ‘I’m afraid I have no plain answers, sir.’

Patch nudges Feely, who is staring across the table at La Roux, his small mouth held open in a swoop of drooping wonderment. Big grunts and commences eating. His mood is patently still wholesale
stinky
.

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.’

He pats Feely on the shoulder. Feely grimaces (he’s not fooled. He’s still mistrustful, and he’s
horribly
proprietorial about his fictions), then pitter-patters off to fetch his bean-bag. I set about trying to find the appropriate book, with the requisite amount of banging and swearing.

Patch, meanwhile (supremely oblivious), quietly discusses La Roux’s
trichological
aspirations.

‘I think you need it short at the sides but fluffy on top. That’s the style of the moment. Do you know the pop star Terry Hall?’ she asks. ‘He’s the stupid, blond one in Fun Boy Three?’

‘I don’t, actually, but here’s my idea,’ he tells her. ‘You know how it is when someone catches a ringworm?’

She frowns, not quite getting it. ‘You mean on their head? In their hair?’

He nods. ‘Exactly. Let’s do that, keeping the overall look and length much as it is currently, just cutting out a couple of bald circles in really unexpected places.’

Patch muses this over for a minute, in silence.

‘Think you’re up to it, technically?’ La Roux asks.

Patch’s serious face breaks into a wide smile. She repositions the scissors on her fingers. ‘Hell,’ she says firmly, ‘just shut up and
watch
me.’

Feely quietly returns, having located his bean-bag. I show him the book. He smiles, plumps himself down and makes himself comfy as I flip through the pages, lounging casually up against the cobwebbed Aga.

‘Okay,’ I tell him, ‘I can do you five paragraphs on the Kasuga Grand Shrine…’ He winces. Not a particular favourite. ‘Or a page and a half about the Art and Architecture of the Kofuku Temple…’