Five Miles from Outer Hope

by Nicola Barker

  I show him the cover. ‘It’s a book about the Japanese city of Nara. Feely’s brother Barge used to read it to him when he was a baby. It’s his favourite. He finds it extremely calming.’

  La Roux scowls but says nothing. Feely opens one eye and shifts a little. I notice his disquiet and resolve – before his unusually restful demeanour can be further disrupted – to smartly commence with the reading.

  ‘The Deer of Nara,’ I begin softly.

  ‘Deer?’ La Roux mutters. ‘In a city?’

  I ignore him.

  ‘Shiro Chan, Queen of the deer of Nara.’ I glance up. ‘That’s the subtitle.’

  La Roux sticks his hands under his opposite armpits (eclipsing his embroidered pony) and stares at me with a worryingly attentive air.

  I continue, ‘“There are approximately one thousand deer in Nara Park. While the bucks proudly display their large antlers, the does gently tend to their fawns. One doe was born with a strange crown of white fur on the top of her head. She was very popular with all the tourists…”’

  At this point, Feely – one eye still open – swallows down a huge gulp of ill-suppressed emotion (He knows what’s coming). I pause briefly, to let it all sink in. La Roux’s own eyes are slowly widening. I repeat the sentence, ‘Yes, “one doe was born with a strange crown of white fur on the top of her head. She was very popular with all the tourists and they called her Shiro Chan. But after only a few short years of life, Shiro Chan was killed in a traffic accident. It would seem that a true beauty is fated to live a short life only, even among the deer.”’

  I squat down next to Feely. ‘Want to see the picture?’

  He lifts his head and peeks. ‘The beautiful Shiro Chan…’ He recites the caption automatically. ‘… Yes. I see her.’

  I close the book. Feely collapses back, replete. La Roux blinks repeatedly, ‘Is that it?’

  I nod.

  ‘And you say reading this book was your brother Barge’s idea?’

  I nod again.

  ‘Is he some kind of maniac?’

  I glare. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘He’s living on a kibbutz,’ Patch intervenes, as if inadvertently determined to justify all La Roux’s worst prejudices, ‘in the Baltics. He’s hoping to become a famous painter one day. He lost the tip of his tongue in a fight defending the honour of our oldest sister. It was terribly tragic. He needed twenty-seven stitches. Which is loads.’

  ‘In his tongue?’ La Roux is plainly appalled.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And is he a good painter?’

  Patch snorts. ‘Really bad. He’s nuts about L. S. Lowry. He paints red houses. Industrial scenes. That kind of thing. With a palette knife. He eschews brushes. It’s very messy. I’ve repeatedly told him my theory about how the real future of art is in cat paintings. Cats, flowers and cottages. That’s what people prefer nowadays. Nobody in the eighties wants to be reminded of Britain’s great industrial heritage. It’s all terribly passé.’

  ‘Cats?’

  ‘I’m telling you.’

  La Roux is silent for a minute, as if quietly thinking something over. ‘Do you really, honestly believe, Medve,’ he suddenly turns and asks me, ‘that true beauty is fated to live a short life only, even among the deer?’

  I glance down at Feely, somewhat cautiously, and hedge my bets. ‘I can’t say I know enough about deer to answer that question either way.’

  La Roux shakes his head.

  ‘Stop shaking,’ Patch tells him, ‘or you’ll mess up your ring.’

  ‘A road traffic accident,’ La Roux repeats. ‘It’s plainly impractical to keep wild animals in a modern city. And to think I actually had the Japanese down as a sensible people.’ He pauses. ‘So let me see the picture of this crazy, white-headed doe for a minute…’

  He puts out his hand. I pick up the book again and am just about to pass it over when Feely explodes from his bean-bag, snatches the book away from me, yells, ‘How dare you make fun of Shiro Chan!’ and then copiously wets himself where he stands. Before anyone can add anything, he hurtles – with all the speed and precision of a one-wheeled biplane attempting an emergency landing with a serious fuel leak – out of the kitchen.

  La Roux shrugs, sighs and peers mournfully after him. ‘I can’t help thinking’, he murmurs thoughtfully, ‘how that poor, morbid child takes a little too much after his tiny father.’

  Immediately after – as if nothing at all significant has happened – he starts telling a fascinated Patch, at length, about his troubled South African school-days (about the unflattering shorts he wore and the horrible haircuts, about the corporal punishment and the compulsory rugby. Oh, the eternal smarts of a thousand indignities!) while I slide around silently on the slippy tiles, do a spot of mopping, grab a fresh cloth, the bean-bag, a Pomfret cake, and then skid grimly off to try and tackle the too-tender, one-wheeled, wet-bellied plane-wreck of little Feely.

  Just four brief years old, dear Reader, and my, what a tangle.

  Chapter 11

  So they give you the regulation pep-talk, render you horizontal, stick these blessed little pins in your ears and then bugger off for half an hour. At first there’s a burning and your whole face turns scarlet. Then there’s a nasty, queasy interlude. Then an overwhelming taste of metal (like licking a newly sharpened knife, or getting a filling, or chewing down hard on silver foil).

  After fifteen minutes – I’m staring listlessly up at the ceiling all the while – the acupuncturist returns briefly to give the pins a little twizzle. He peers down at my ears with an expression of intense satisfaction. ‘I think everything’s in order,’ he tells me (obviously ludicrously impressed by his own sterling efficiency), then scarpers off again with all the sharp-heeled and officious dispatch of Alice’s White Rabbit.

  Some pins hurt much more than others when he moves them. I think they’re in deeper. There are eight of them in total: seven in the left ear, one in the right. As he touches them I bite my tongue, clench my fists and try my damnedest not to whimper.

  As he’s leaving me again I turn my head slightly – but very carefully, anxious not to knock the pins into the pale, crochet-covered counterpane – and say, ‘By the way, I really like your dog picture…’

  I indicate towards the bedside table, where, taking pride of place, is a black-and-white photo of an unappealing cross-breed: tongue out, head cocked, salivating regally. Impeccably framed. A visibly ancient thing but much beloved. A reproduction. Blown up. Touched up. But in terrible condition.

  I don’t know if this evasive acupuncturist hears me. If he does, he doesn’t trouble himself to answer.

  I have no business dreaming about Jack Henry Abbott. Yet suddenly this crazy Yank celebrity killer is marching around like an armed guard inside my night-times. He’s lecturing me, at length, about Marx and inequality and perception. He’s ranting and raving and speaking in italics.

  Sometimes they drug him and his words are blurred. At these times he drones on endlessly about hope and despair and human weakness. Sometimes he’s pacing silently (These are the worst times. His silence is remorseless). Sometimes he’s writing poetry. He flirts with haiku: three lines, seventeen syllables. He says he actively enjoys the restriction, the containment of this particular art form. He relishes it. He finds it ironic.

  Yeah, Jack Henry. Ha fucking ha.

  Sometimes he starves himself. He’s still extremely angry. In fact he’s livid – even though I keep trying to tell him this is my dream and he’s as free as a bird in it. Free. Paroled. Friday the fifth. The very same day on which (I idly mention) that screwball South African first set his two promiscuously cheesy feet on our innocent part-island.

  But this professional, hard-edged, handcuffed misanthropist isn’t even remotely interested in the stuff I’m telling him. He says he has a whole fifty-four card pack of his own problems to deal with.

  You’re free, you lucky fucker. Get out of my damn head!

  But he won’t go. I
t’s as if he’s waiting for something. Just squatting angrily in a corner, like he’s taking a dump, muttering and scowling and stewing and staring.

  Holy Lamb! My unconscious is running me bloody ragged.

  I’m hanging around aimlessly, waiting for Big to dawdle home. It’s already a ridiculous hour: too late to be night, too early to be morning. I guess I feel it’s my daughterly duty (as his oldest remaining nest-bound offspring – I’m his rock, I’m his strength, I’m his staff, I tell you) to keep a keen eye out for his general well-being.

  Waking. Dreaming. Book on my lap (no prizes for fingering the criminal who wrote it), propped up in a wicker chair and wrapped in a blanket. No light, just the moon through my domed-glass ceiling. No sound, just the wicker creaking and the stained tiles rattling.

  Jack Henry is telling me about his plans to escape. He got out once (1971, if I remember correctly) for an outrageously cheeky six-week vacation. Lay low in a hotel room in Ontario, Canada. And at night – this is the cruellest irony – he dreamed he was back in the hole, back in prison, back in solitary: just pacing and pacing and endlessly pacing.

  After six short weeks they caught him and banged him up again.

  Born in Michigan: an unwanted baby. Enjoyed a bad run of foster accommodation. Shunted from place to place like an empty fairground dodgem. Turned rotten aged nine. Spent a spell in juvenile detention. Went back at twelve, followed by six long years in some crazy sub-military institution.

  Free for a short span at eighteen – age of consent I believe they call it. Issued a cheque against insufficient funds. Was arrested. At which point, at long last, the Big Boys – the real retributionary players – finally got their grubby hands on him (or that’s how he’s telling it).

  Killed a man in prison. Self-defence, he hollers. And that was the end. That was when they buried him. Except he had a sister. And a sympathetic bookshop. Who sent him just the kind of stuff he needed to survive it…

  Big tomes, slim volumes, hardbacks, softbacks. History, philosophy, politics. Jack Henry got self-educated. Slowly lost his sense of humour. Started a correspondence with famous writer Norman Mailer (then seriously obsessed by legendary death row prisoner/martyr – depending on how you look at it – Gary Gilmore).

  Abbott picked him up, when he needed it, on points of ideological and factual accuracy. I mean he was an insider, wasn’t he? He was the man they called The Professor.

  Nobody, but nobody, fucked with him.

  Footsteps on the parquet. At first I think it’s Big back home (but the more I mull it over, the more I realize the tide’s all wrong for crossing by foot at this particular hour). Through the foyer, the dining-room, out on to the balcony, then back in again, slowly, down the smooth loop of stairs and into the kitchen.

  This oddly aimless and arbitrary wandering continues for what feels like an eternity… Back up the stairs, into the snooker room, the foyer, a lengthy pause in front of the part-draped statue of Diana, some utterly inexplicable scratching.

  Then finally (and I’m hardly breathing at this stage), a gradual, almost nervy materialization in my doorway. Eight or nine feet away. He hesitates, then shuffles forward like he’s in shackles. The moonlight shines down on him.

  La Roux, in his nightwear: a pair of undersized pyjamas, flapping like mainsails above his ankles. And he has something with him, by his heels, in the darkness. I slowly start breathing again. ‘La Roux!’ I chastize him in an anxious whisper. ‘Are you trying to scare the living shit out of me?’

  He doesn’t answer. He turns and shuffles across the Peacock Lounge, running his hand along the shiny-tiled cocktail bar. He carefully avoids my mattress and bedding. The darker, smudgy creature follows, like a dog, a short distance behind him.

  He pauses, briefly (obscured by a parlour palm). I hear some furtive scuffling followed by a gentle tinkle. I think he may well be pissing in the empty fountain.

  ‘La Roux! What the fuck are you doing?’

  I speak louder this time and clamber to my feet. He strolls around the fountain and directly towards me.

  ‘I’m walking the dog,’ he answers calmly.

  His voice is a dull monotone, and when he speaks it’s into the air directly to the left of where I’m standing.

  ‘Did you say dog?’

  ‘Spookie. Little Spookie. Little ghost. Our tiny puppy.’

  And now he’s talking like a baby.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  He shakes his head, frowning. ‘You never liked the dog, did you, Gavin? Not after you found it licking me. But there really was nothing wrong with it. It was simply a matter of two lost souls coming together and…’ he thinks for a moment, ‘… and comforting one another.’

  ‘It’s Medve, you moron.’ I wave my hand at him. He doesn’t blink or react. This skinny, flimsy-pyjamaed ginger boy is plainly sleepwalking. I think he believes I’m his brother or someone. I’m not entirely certain but I’m pretty sure I remember him mentioning a single male sibling previously. Slightly older than him. One or two years, maybe?

  ‘My brother,’ he explains slowly (thereby instantly confirming my suspicions) and speaking like he’s remembering a difficult piece of calculus, or a poem, or a biblical quotation, ‘got bitten by a crocodile in a southern tributary of the great Okovango River…’

  I’m about to talk but he interrupts me.

  ‘On patrol,’ he says suddenly. ‘On the Angolan border. The Caprivi Strip,’ he shudders, ‘in Namibia.’

  Then he turns and whistles, over his shoulder, very softly.

  ‘Was he badly hurt?’

  ‘Huh?’ he turns back again, plainly irritated.

  ‘Your brother. Was he hurt? Did it kill him?’

  He laughs drily.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘He was fine. It was a dare. Those were the kinds of things we did back then. You know, just to pass the time when we weren’t murdering the boys from SWAPO or raping their women in the outlying villages…’

  He sighs. ‘War can be very boring…’ He pauses, ominously. ‘And that’s always when the truly bad things start to happen…’

  His breathing deepens.

  ‘What were you doing in Namibia?’ I ask gently (if only I’d followed Patch’s reading itinerary – then, at least, all this strategic babble wouldn’t sound like utter Greek to me).

  ‘I was conscripted. I was fighting…’ he cackles hollowly, then shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what the fuck I was doing… But when they tried to give me a gun…’

  He puts out his hands as if to protect himself from something.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I said, “If you give me a gun I’ll kill you with it.” So they compromised and made me a medic instead.’

  He laughs again, but his mouth is turning down at its corners.

  ‘Did you mean it?’

  La Roux scratches his head, confusedly, ‘Mean what…?’ he thinks for a moment. ‘That I’d kill them? Of course not. I could never… That was the whole point, stupid.’

  He pauses, keeping his hands in his hair. ‘In the sands of the Namib, the desert children are nannied by dogs. They lick their arses clean when they’ve finished shitting. They keep them spotless. It’s always happened. There’s nothing wrong with it.’

  I remain silent.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ he mutters defensively. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know. And how after you caught me you could never really bear to look at me again. Not properly. Only sideways. And disapproving. Just like the rest of them. Then the dog gave me ringworm. And you said it was God punishing me for being so completely fucking disgusting.’

  He continues to touch his scalp. ‘Do you feel the rings? I feel them.’ He sighs, ‘Spookie would lick them better. We caught lizards in the garden together right up until the day he died. July 15th, 1977. From tick-bite fever.’

  We are both silent for a while.

  ‘I have to get up early in the mo
rning,’ he suddenly informs me. Then he taps his leg, as if calling a dog to heel, and begins walking again, slowly, towards the door. Which is precisely when I’m consumed by a sudden, heart-stopping chill, because that small, dark thing I’d noticed previously is back again, and resolutely trailing in his wake like a clumsy shadow.

  I stare a little harder. Then I distinguish this curious creature’s parameters. Not a ghost dog at all, but a huge clump of tangled wool, strung around his right ankle, with Big’s best-beloved crochet odds-and-ends bag bumping and dragging just a short distance behind it.

  Sweet Lord above, what a fucking wind-up.

  Big returns an hour later. I’m fast asleep in bed by then, but he creeps in on boot-heavy legs to check up on me (I mean, what does he imagine I might be doing?). I open my eyes to see his tiny torso retreating apologetically.

  ‘Big,’ I whisper.

  He peers over his shoulder. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  I sit up. ‘Where did you get to?’

  ‘I just went walking.’

  ‘Where did you end up?’

  ‘Salcombe. In a pub.’

  Even doze-dazed I’m astonished by this revelation. Big is no barfly (he doesn’t have it in him, either socially or digestively speaking). My slow mind instantly starts churning: are things really much worse between him and Mo than I’d initially imagined?

  ‘Did you drink anything?’ I ask, secretly moved by his manly bravura.

  ‘Tomato juice with Worcestershire Sauce.’ He rubs his stomach. ‘And I’m paying for it already, actually.’

  I deflate internally. ‘And the route? Did you go the Church-stow–Marlborough way?’ (Okay, so I’m a girl obsessed by orientation. No law against that, is there?)

  He chuckles. ‘What is this? Twenty questions? I took the small roads. I simply meandered. Uh…’ He counts the villages off on his fingers, ‘Bigbury, Buckland, Outer Hope…’

  ‘Really?’ I suddenly interrupt him. ‘And how was that?’

  He frowns. ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Outer Hope. How was it?’

  ‘Smallish. Couple of pubs. Nothing fancy. In fact…’