Five Miles from Outer Hope

by Nicola Barker

  ‘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 you 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 Fee
ly 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…’

  Feely waves his arm and closes his eyes languidly (he knows what he’s here for). ‘Just give me the deer,’ he whispers.

  ‘Fine,’ I tell him, ‘but I’ll read it once only. That’s the rule.’ (This child’s a devil for sordid repetitions.)

  He nods, pulls in his paws and balls up completely, neatly tucking his mucky knees under his dirty ears.

  La Roux raises his hand while Patch snips up a storm; hair flying everywhere. I glance over.

  ‘What the fuck kind of children’s story is this, anyway?’ he asks.