‘Until?’ (The man’s virtually salivating.)
‘Well, I had some silly idea about maybe going down to the Mermaid Cove – where those strange fishes hang out that wriggle against your shins – the kind of environment you might feel at ease in, and then perhaps I could…’ I frown. ‘Now what is it that they do with new statues at formal public openings? For some reason the word temporarily escapes me…’
‘Disrobing?’ he gabbles.
‘No.’
‘Unsheathing?’
‘No.’
La Roux’s bad-skinned visage breaks into a grin. ‘I don’t care what the word is,’ he crows, ‘it’s a fucking marvellous idea.’
Easy. See? One. Two. Three. And I’ve sunk him.
Chapter 15
Nobody ever pretended Operation Vagina (that’s currently what I’m calling it) would be an easy action. And Lord knows it isn’t. But surely – I tell a slightly bemused Feely as he helps me with some crucial military drawings – even fools appreciate that trapping a wild and wily animal while it’s still alive and kicking always takes infinitely greater time and patience than going out with a firearm and simply shooting it to pieces (Even if, as in La Roux’s case, the use of random fire-power might prove – pound for pound – significantly more gratifying, I’m afraid guns aren’t really a serious option. Why? Because I’m sixteen years young, God-dammit, and unable to get a fucking licence).
I don’t know who I’m trying to convince exactly, him or me. ‘Whatever you say, Medve,’ Feely belches indulgently. ‘I agree completely…’, then he grabs a red crayon and applies it with focused gusto to my pen-and-ink efforts (Yes, the child’s an absolute buttress and still burping, bless him).
If, by any chance, you happen to be interested in my canny Operation’s essential timing, well, all in all, and everything considered, the full and frenzied climax to my major manipulative masterwork takes one dark night and two long days to come into its mature and mellow fruition.
The initial pace is deceptively slow and leisurely, but this does nothing to diminish the unhealthy satisfaction gleaned from each and every well-timed step in my foul and wicked perambulation. The loose scenario runs as follows:
1. The Whitewash
(I believe we’ve been here already.) With a feisty mixture of guano and lies, Sister Patch gets La Roux and the others to think I’m deeply ignorant and guilt-ridden.
2. The Baiting
(Ditto) I masterfully – if I say so myself – convince La Roux that I’m willing to sacrifice my girlie privacy to improve his mental, emotional and sexual well-being.
3. The Drawing
Oooh. Now that’s more like it…
The self-same evening of the fishing trip, I welcome La Roux into the ping-pong room and show him a series of badly penned sketches (This is 1981, remember, and pre-Milan Kundera’s shameless sexual shenanigans with mirrors, so every-thing’s looking pretty damn perfunctory down there, even to begin with, and – to make matters worse – I never really paid much attention during school biology lessons, on the brief occasions I ever had them).
La Roux pulls out a chair and sits down next to me. I notice idly that he has greased back his hair and is wearing his favourite pony jumper. Ah. How touching.
I have borrowed one of Barge’s old artist’s sketch pads for my amateurish doodlings.
‘Okay, La Roux,’ I say calmly, placing the sketch pad before him. ‘I’m going to show you some intimate pictures, and if at any point you sense yourself becoming agitated or unhappy, or if you feel your finger-pads tingling, just tell me about it and I’ll stop what I’m doing and we can play a game of ping-pong or darts or arm wrestle or something, to try and keep the mood as unthreatening and tranquil as possible.’
La Roux takes a deep breath and grabs a hold of my hand. He squeezes it gently. ‘Right,’ he says, nodding twice. ‘I think I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be.’
(Obviously it’s difficult for me to turn the pages or to point at my diagrams effectively now that La Roux has taken my spare paw prisoner. But so be it.)
Page one. The Female Torso, in all its glorious totality (I have traced around the outline of one of Patch’s old Sindy dolls for this full-body illustration, but I’ve given the lady in question a pair of nipples, a friendly smile and a well-defined pubic area).
La Roux stares at the drawing with an air of great satisfaction (nothing to worry about here, presumably).
‘So,’ I smile brightly, ‘I think this is all fairly self-explanatory… Uh…’ I do some pointing. ‘Head, thorax, abdomen. Just the same, I think you’ll find, as with insects and horses. But slightly different from fishes. Right…’
I’m about to turn over when La Roux says, ‘Here’s a question for you…’
‘What?’ I ask anxiously.
‘I’ve long wondered’, he ruminates, ‘whether women pee through their vaginas. It’s just that’s one of the things I’ve always found slightly off-putting about them, sexually.’
He casually twitches his fingers as he stares at me. I take a deep breath, clamp my jaw together and then shake my head.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I grind (that terrible mixture of enraged and giggly). ‘Of course women don’t pee through their sexual organs. That would be disgusting. They urinate through an extra hole just below their bottoms. I’ll show you exactly where, later, in the more detailed illustration, if you’ll bear with me.’
I turn over.
Page Two. The Genital Region.
La Roux clenches my hand a little tighter.
‘I feel nauseous,’ he confides, blinking repeatedly.
Fine. We play two games of ping-pong and I cheerfully wipe the floor with him (21–6, 21–4). Then we sit down again. Slightly out of breath and perspiring gently.
La Roux slowly sets about inspecting the illustration properly. He starts at the top end and then works his way downwards, frowning. ‘Two things,’ he mutters, after a while.
‘Fire away.’
‘First off, for a woman who paints china for a living you seem to have no real, discernible artistic ability. This female genital looks like an angry moose, yawning. Secondly, there’s far more activity here than I ever remember learning about in biology. There are so many cavities it’s like a shower-head…’ he points. ‘I mean, what’s that, to start off with?’
I look closer. ‘That’s…’ I turn the drawing up the other way. ‘I think that’s a nipple. No. No. It’s a belly button, stupid.’
La Roux stares harder. ‘And below it?’
‘Clitoris. The girl penis.’
His eyes widen. ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Nope.’
‘The girl penis,’ La Roux repeats, softly, committing it to memory.
He stares some more. ‘And there?’
‘Oh… no…’ I chuckle, ‘that’s something Feely put in when I wasn’t looking. I think it’s supposed to be a revolutionary standard. Like a flag. Simply try and ignore it.’
La Roux’s brow wrinkles. ‘It’s just the particular colour he’s chosen is giving me a bad feeling… You know… Red. Infection.’
I quickly put my hand over it.
‘Just think a little harder about the cervix instead,’ I tell him brightly (incidentally, not featured in this diagram – internal bits and pieces are better illustrated on page three).
La Roux points again. ‘The moose’s jowls,’ he mutters, ‘is that the thing you just mentioned?’
I snigger. ‘Nope. Labia. A fleshy area.’
‘And this? Urgh!’
He inhales sharply and his face almost quivers with horror.
‘Oh dear,’ I ho-hum, ‘it’s just some low-fat fruit yoghurt. A piece of peach I must’ve accidentally spat out while I was drawing. Sorry.’
I pull the offending item off with my nail, and then blow it away. ‘There. Gone.’
La Roux pushes his chair back. ‘I think,’ he mutters, ‘I’ve seen enough to be going on with. Perhaps you
should put them away again. For the time being, anyway…’
‘But I haven’t even shown you the special urinary duct yet,’ I protest indignantly.
La Roux stands. ‘Come on,’ he taunts, grabbing a bat and waving it. ‘I suddenly feel like the time has come for The Great La Roux to thrash you senseless at ping-pong.’
I put away the pictures, without any further objections. Then I grab my bat, we play the game and I beat him, three times over in quick succession. 21–1, 21–4, 21–3. Which in my book is pretty bloody categorically.
4. My Disgusting Crochet Knickers
(Now we’re really getting somewhere.)
It’s a good while later (after eight, approximately) and following an extended bout of early evening snacking. (The menu? Rice cakes, walnuts in vinegar, dried pears and tinned figs in their natural juices.) Big trots casually outside on to the balcony to savour the large, pink sun a-setting over the sea with that bastard brown-nose La Roux close in tow. More crochet fun is plainly in the offing.
After doing a couple of circuits (for some inexplicable reason, La Roux has a tiny, white, clay pipe with him – the kind they unearth in tedious archaeological excavations – and while he walks he chews on it like a vacuous South African amalgam of Sherlock Holmes and Popeye), they sit down together, either side of a wicker table, with three rolls of wool, a book Big’s reading about the Hay Diet, and a flickering oil lamp burning between them.
Big is completing Nebraska (pale mauve) while La Roux is receiving cursory instructions on how to make a clumsy, circular doily. It’s all horribly intense and muscular and arts and craftsy, as I’m sure you can imagine.
I’m serving tea, as it happens. Rosehip. I bring it out on a tray. I shove the balls of wool aside, to make room for it (they both cluck like old women, in tandem, then continue what they’re doing, without even thanking me).
I turn to go. I walk five steps away, then pause, and spin, and face them again. Although Big – from where I’m now carefully stationed – has his back to me, La Roux, on the other hand, has a perfect view of my fine girl-giant figure over his compadre’s tiny needle-working shoulder.
I place my knees together, lift my skirt, adjust my knickers, and wait patiently for La Roux’s attention. A full four minutes pass (it seems that initially he’s much too deeply embroiled in the wonders of crochet to notice my silent attendance), then Big reaches out his hand for a sip of his tea.
He takes a mouthful, pulls a face, puts his cup down, tips in a little honey, stirs, offers a kindly word of wisdom to La Roux. (‘I think if you hold the needle less tightly the stitches will loosen up accordingly. It’s all just a question of flow, I find, with crochet.’ Jeepers. And people think Chairman Mao was fussy?)
La Roux glances up at him, nods, looks down again. Chews on his pipe some. Freezes. His hands become slightly clumsy. He takes a deep breath, and then, finally, shoulders up and blinking, he peeks my way again.
My way? I’ve gone. I’ve vamoosed. I’ve scarpered. Fast as a rat, I’ve scuttled inside and have hidden, sniggering, behind the curtains.
La Roux scowls, disconcertedly. Did he really just imagine a scary six-foot girl giant, her teeth full of fig pips, grinning savagely in the dark and scary shadows of the oil-lamp’s flickering? Did he? The very devil in a voluminous pair of badly soiled, baggy, crochet knickers. Standing, larger than life, only five short steps behind her temperamental, tea-sipping father (a short-fused bugger at the best of times)? Did he?
Big glances up again and notices La Roux’s eyes wandering around anxiously in the shadows behind him. ‘La Roux, what are you thinking?’ he suddenly stutters. ‘You’ve dropped a stitch there, can’t you see?’ He gets up, shows him how to rectify the problem, returns to his chair and sits down again. ‘And don’t forget to drink up your tea,’ he reminds him, several minutes later, in a most sweet and cordial and gentlemanly manner.
5. La Roux gets The Collywobbles
You know how it is with a military operation. It can’t run too smoothly. There have to be undercurrents, back-washes and eddies. To keep things uneasy.
Before bed La Roux corners me in the kitchen and whispers, ‘I think I’ve suddenly lost interest in this whole genital situation.’
I gasp and look suitably devastated. ‘La Roux. No. You’ve got to be kidding. I mean, after all the effort I’ve put into it?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s just too damn risky.’
I frown. ‘Sorry? Risky? What do you mean?’
He grimaces. ‘You know. The little dumb-scene, earlier, behind Big, at tea.’
I continue frowning. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
He sighs impatiently. ‘The figgy teeth. The huge crochet panties.’
‘Panties?’ I echo. ‘Huge? Don’t be ridiculous. Figgy teeth? I never eat figs. Ask anybody. Ask Patch.’
Patch trundles conveniently into view at exactly this moment, Feely in tow.
‘Patch,’ La Roux enquires, just as I’ve suggested, ‘does Medve here eat figs ever?’
Patch looks at La Roux as if she thinks he’s crazy. ‘Figs? Never. They give her eczema. She’s horribly, horribly, horribly allergic.’
I give her a warning glance (talk about a fat and shifty Sarah Bernhardt in the making), then yank La Roux into the laundry room, slam the door behind him, and lift up my skirt most gingerly, modestly showing him only the most inoffensive corner of my freshly changed undergarments.
Cheesecloth. Petite. With birds and roses. The kind of things you could blow your nose on and then throw away. Flimsy as a weak alibi.
‘Oh,’ La Roux frowns, then looks a little closer, ‘that’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there, on your thigh…’
‘Well, next time you happen to feel like taking a peek at it,’ I tell him, haughtily dropping my hem and flouncing doorwards, ‘you’d better ask me very nicely, you rude and ungrateful South African sissy.’
As I march resolutely through the kitchen – chin up, hips twitching – fat Patch, still lounging against the work surfaces, stands straight, salutes, and then winks at me lewdly, like a too-eager busboy after a big tip.
Chapter 16
‘It’s always in that brief and blissful moment when you feel you’re at your most unassailable that you actually have the worst to fear…’
I was taught this motto in Malay Brownies, and it so often proved invaluable to me throughout the seventies – all those tricky pyjama parties and risky pre-teen-girl-tiffs: ‘You’re my best friend!’, ‘No I’m not! She is! And you’re ugly!’ – that you’d honestly think, at this apposite juncture, it would be absolutely foremost in my mental processes.
But it isn’t (Perhaps I’ve got above myself, temporarily. Truth to tell, I’m seriously considering borrowing the life story of Che Guevara from the local library to give me a taste of something really meaty in terms of conflict philosophy. You know, to try and get familiar with some of the more filthy aspects of war-making, the likes of which Baden Powell never dreamed of even in his most frenzied, strong-brown-booted pseudo-authoritarian fantasies).
Don’t call me overconfident. Just call me silly.
Two a.m. One moment I am deep asleep (dreaming about a true-life incident in which Jack Henry is found guilty by a Kansas-based Grand Jury, and sentenced to ten bonus years in prison for carrying a dangerous weapon concealed about his battered person. A Bic biro, but without its inky middle.
Jack Henry is incandescent with rage. He can’t honestly believe they’d send him down for this trifle. A Bic pen? Are you kidding?
But although I keep asking him why he was carrying the pen and what exact purpose it was serving – it’s a long night and I have nothing better to do with myself – he just keeps cursing at me and saying it’s irrelevant or that I’m bothering him unnecessarily. He wants some peace. Can’t I see that? Am I stupid or something?
‘But this is my head, you rascal,’ I bleat at him. ‘So?!’ he yells back at me. ‘You think I actua
lly want to be in this hell-hole? Do you imagine I like being trapped inside the teenage skull of a girl who’s never even bothered reading Marx or Jung or Sartre or Dostoevsky…?’) Then – bam! – the very next instant I am wide awake and giggling. Yes. I said giggling. Uncontrollably.
Because I am receiving a relentless tickling at the hands of a Master Tickler. Guess who? No. On second thoughts, don’t bother. It can be none other than the Pesky South African.
I don’t know if the actual tickling is entirely intentional (I’ve just woken up, how sodding rational do you expect me to be?), but he’s applying something soft as thistle-down to the base of my spine; that tantalizing junction where my baby-doll nightie is just supposed to cover its matching puffball panties (I get two baby-dolls every year from my Great Aunt Sonya who thinks because I’m so huge she’s literally obliged to buy me everything in miniature).
I slap at the place at least five times before I realize it’s not in fact a deeply misguided leaden-arsed mosquito or a mischievously fluffy-footed fairy tap-dancing cheerily at the top end of my buttocks. It’s something altogether different. It’s a peacock feather.
I sit up and blink. La Roux stands before me (in his regulation army pyjamas), waving the feather around like an air-traffic controller. I rub my eyes. ‘Are you sleep-walking again?’ I whisper querulously.
‘What?’
(Plainly not by the strength of his reaction.) He sits down, cross-legged, on the end of my mattress and pulls a spare blanket around his bony shoulders.
‘So, what are you doing?’ he asks.
I blink, indignantly. ‘What am I doing? I was fucking sleeping.’
‘Oh.’ He sighs, yawns, scratches his head a little and stares up at the colourful dome above him. ‘There’s a piece of glass, a green piece, directly above us. The wind’s really rattling it. Can you see it shifting?’
I look to where he’s pointing. ‘It’s always done that. It’s just part of the stained-glass deal. Lovely but noisy. Like an intelligent female.’
Five Miles from Outer Hope Page 13
