Five Miles from Outer Hope

by Nicola Barker

  Unfortunately, Poodle seems to have it in for him from the very beginning. The first thing she says after they exchange greetings (and, in fairness, she does actually direct this snide comment towards me) is, ‘If I find out who taught Feely that pathetic burping habit I’m going to stitch up their rectum and then feed them molasses.’

  (My older sister means business. She’s hard as enamel.)

  The next thing she says is, ‘What the fuck is that smell in here?’, and after sniffing the air like a beautiful bloodhound barks. ‘It’s tea tree oil! I’d recognize its rotten, antiseptic scent anywhere.’

  (Ah, so this solves that mystery.)

  La Roux and I – as part of my Draconian Punishment Regimen – have now been formally forbidden from spending time together. We are not to be trusted alone under any circumstances, and the only words we are permitted to utter must either be completely uncontentious or absolutely necessary (like ‘Fire!’, or ‘Pass the ketchup’, or ‘I think Feely’s hyperventilating’, which he does after supper. Too much burping, apparently).

  Naturally I corner Patch in the kitchen later that same evening and quietly prepare to kick her head in. But – believe it or not – La Roux (who has ears like a whippet) comes storming on in at an inopportune moment and literally, physically drags me off her.

  ‘Violence is no solution, Medve,’ he tells me (thereby violating every punitive penalty I am currently labouring under) ‘to this fine mess you’ve got us into.’

  ‘Wanna bet?’ I bellow, and then I pause for a second. ‘Hang on. Who the hell do you think you are? Oliver fucking Hardy? The fine mess who got us into, anyway?’

  He shakes his finger at me. ‘I think you probably heard me the first time, young lady.’ (Young lady? What a dweeb.)

  And do you think the fat brat is grateful for his muscular intervention? Is she heck! Not a jot of it! ‘I can fight my own bloody battles,’ she yells, then marches off brazenly.

  Is it just me, or has Poodle gone and soured everything?

  When supper is over (a monosyllabic occasion – La Roux and Feely staring, as if hypnotized, at Poodle’s sweet-scented and expensively encased bazookas, Poodle wincing at La Roux’s eating habits, Big inquiring constantly about Mo and Bob Ranger, Poodle evading him fairly ineffectually… ‘Yeah, they’re working very hard together…’, Patch and me still both sulking competitively: and guess who’s winning?) Poodle comes downstairs to help me with the washing-up.

  As soon as she thinks everyone is out of earshot, she throws in the towel and pulls out a chair. ‘Okay, Medve,’ she tells me, ‘we’ve got to get the South African out of here. And I mean yesterday.’

  I turn and glare at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s nothing personal, but his father’s sending Mo money and that’s the only reason she can currently afford to stay in America. The way I see it, we really need her home again.’

  ‘But I thought she was doing pretty well out there?’

  Poodle growls exasperatedly. ‘She’s this fucking close, you moron,’ she flashes me an inch gap between her pretty fingers, ‘to leaving him.’

  I blink. ‘Leaving who?’

  Her huge eyes widen. ‘Our poor father, stupid! Why the hell else would I decide to come back here? You honestly think I don’t have other places I’d much rather be?

  ‘And anyway,’ she continues, ‘Big could get into serious trouble if he’s found guilty of giving shelter to an illegal immigrant. He’s the last person in the world who needs visa problems at the moment. Something like this could be a major black mark against him…’

  I think she’s exaggerating, but before I can say anything I hear gentle steps on the stairway, so tip my head and shush her.

  Five seconds later Big appears, and he’s beaming.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to Jack,’ he tells us, ‘and he was saying he’d had this great idea of taking us as a family to see a parliament of starlings. He’s borrowing a friend’s Land Rover tomorrow evening. It’s a very kind offer. Are the two of you interested?’

  Poodle shrugs (she’s not much of a nature lover) and I nod.

  ‘Great. Then I’ll go and tell him.’ He prances off again.

  ‘I still can’t believe you got your breasts done,’ I snipe, returning to my washing-up duties (still in quite a tizzy about the South African dilemma). ‘How much did they cost you? I bet that ancient, leather-faced travel agent put his hand to his pocket.’

  ‘You know what?’ she oozes back at me. ‘I really can’t believe you’re still growing. Just a couple more months and that huge, fat head of yours will be scraping the ceiling.’

  Oh God, how I hate her.

  Big loves this girl so dearly that it is literally sickening to watch him around her. She makes him happy. He finds her funny. They go on special little walks together. They talk about the progress he’s making in the shrubberies and with his pathetic Yank crochet wall-hanging.

  She confides in him about her surgery and how much having it done meant to her. And he tells her how he thinks it’s the person inside that really matters, so in his book she’s always been perfect anyway.

  Can you believe all this clap-trap?

  Yeah. So I won’t bother denying how hard it is having my beautiful older sister back home again. (I’m feeling like the outcast crow who never receives an invite to the fox’s cheese dinner.)

  Suddenly, Poodle’s the one Feely wants to read him a bedtime story. And Black Jack turns and stares after her when she totters past him in her expensive lizardskin heels and flying jacket (like she’s a gentle thief who’s stolen his eyes away). Even La Roux. Even he jumps on the bandwagon.

  Over breakfast (on the morning after her arrival), he asks her courteously whether he can pour her more coffee (yes, we’re all drinking coffee now because this is Poodle’s brand-new beverage of preference). He’s stopped wearing his balaclava. His hair is oiled and shiny. His nails are clean. He’s even stopped smelling, temporarily.

  It’s just too much disappointment for a single, ugly, gangly, envious girl giant to handle. So I spend the morning fishing, on my own. Thinking.

  I mean, perhaps La Roux would be better off leaving. And perhaps Mo should come home again. And maybe Barge is a talented painter. And perhaps Big isn’t as small as he seems…

  And maybe Feely should stop burping. And perhaps I really ought to start considering acting my age instead of my shoe-size (although the two – strictly speaking – are virtually identical).

  Surprise surprise. The damn fish aren’t biting. I don’t catch a thing. But I do overhear an extraordinary conversation – on my return home for lunch – strolling through the foyer. Voices from the Ganges Room.

  Poodle and La Roux. And she’s quietly and calmly asking him to go.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she tells him, ‘but there are certain personal, family problems which only your leaving can rectify.’

  La Roux doesn’t speak a word.

  ‘Big could get into trouble if the authorities find out you’re here. And the situation with Medve at the moment isn’t ideal, either. Anyhow,’ she wheedles in that awfully sweet but horribly direct way she’s perfected to an art form over the years, ‘I’m sure there must be people back in South Africa who are missing you terribly.’

  ‘The thing with Medve,’ La Roux intervenes, ‘just got a little out of hand…’

  Poodle ignores him. ‘Big was telling me that you were a medic in the army,’ she slithers, ‘which I thought was wonderful.’

  La Roux is silent again.

  ‘And the point is,’ she continues, ‘if you really didn’t want to go back for some reason, with the political situation as it is out there, I’m sure you could say you had moral objections to fighting in the war. Or that you were actively opposed to apartheid or something. I’m certain they’d buy it if you were sufficiently convincing…’

  When La Roux next speaks, it is in a strange, dark voice. ‘I could never,’ he whispers hoarsely, ‘I could
never do that. It would be wrong. It would be cowardly. It would be cheap and weak and underhand.’

  Oh dear. This is turning nasty. And I’m seriously thinking about sticking out my small chest and sticking in my big beak, when I suddenly hear footsteps, behind me, coming my way, so I turn on my tail and scarper, determining to corner Poodle later and have my bloody say.

  After lunch – a sedate affair in the dining-room, with Poodle presiding – La Roux passes me on the stairs. We’re heading in opposite directions. ‘I have nowhere else to go,’ he whispers. Then he slowly continues descending, as if he hasn’t even spoken.

  Patch has quite lost her glow. I don’t know how or why exactly, but she’s suddenly awfully pale of face and full of lethargy. Later that afternoon, when we’re all preparing to head off and see the starlings, she says she feels under the weather and asks to stay at home instead.

  La Roux – he’s back wearing his balaclava again, which I presume must be a good sign – kindly offers to stay with her, but she shakes her head and mutters how she’d much rather be alone. At which point Poodle steps in and won’t take no for an answer.

  She pulls off her coat and says she’s not particularly interested in seeing a pack of noisy, greasy starlings flying around anyway. So that is that, then.

  Much as I expected, the starlings are further away than Black Jack anticipated. We drive for fifty minutes, Feely, Big and me crammed on to the front seat, La Roux sitting alone in the open back, his balaclava off, his hair flying in the slipstream, and he’s sneaking the odd opportunity – when the impulse takes him – of hanging his head over the side and howling like an uptight, ill-trained, overexcitable puppy.

  When we finally reach our location – a strangely flat, isolated and marshy area with extensive reedbeds concealing angry coots who yell from their hidden corners when we first arrive like irritable feathered fire alarms – the sky is grey and dusky. It’s also pretty damn empty.

  Black Jack parks the car and we all clamber out. Nobody says anything. Silence. The odd coot shouts. Silence again. After fifteen minutes Big starts getting impatient. Are we in the right place? Is it the proper season?

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ La Roux says, spinning on the spot, ‘can’t you hear something?’

  We all hold our breath and listen. At first I hear nothing. And then, a kind of windy noise, a swishing. Wings. Beating.

  They’ve come. In their thousands. Like a hurricane. But silent, and ghostly. Not a stray tweet or an angry twitter among them. They arrive like a plague of feathers. Like a glossy, black whirlwind. A tornado of starlings, darting and spinning and turning and spiralling. Making shapes in the sky. Flying in formation. But madly. And randomly.

  A million birds. One huge, great organism. One cloud. Then they divide. And join up again. They draw tigers in the air, and steam trains and pythons. They annex the sky in a single, stealthy, inky occupation of rapturous beak and shiny claw and piercing eye. Turning one way, then the other.

  I glance at La Roux. He’s just to the right of me. His face is turned to the heavens, his mouth is open. He is crying.

  When the sun has flown and the birds have set, La Roux takes a deep breath, then stands tall and turns and faces the assembled company.

  ‘I thought you should know,’ he says, clumsily pulling his balaclava back on again, ‘I’m so very grateful for all the things you’ve done for me, and I’m leaving in the morning.’

  Then we drive home, darkly.

  It’s a long night. Jack Henry spends the best part of it scurrying around inside my head catching cockroaches and devouring them ‘for the protein’. When he pauses for a moment, he tells me this story about how he once used his regulation Bible to make a club during a long run in solitary – he used water from the lavatory and constructed it out of papier maché – then when one of the guards popped his head in to check up on him, he bludgeoned him soundly with it. Cut him quite badly.

  The man had been systematically tormenting him, he tells me, like you are, he says, like you are.

  He seems to think this story is terribly funny for some reason. But when he laughs his stomach starts hurting. Bile. So he stops laughing and quietly starts hunting for bugs again.

  I am awoken by Black Jack, banging heavily on the front door, and calling. It’s too early. Everything’s still dazy. I crawl out of bed to answer him. He’s breathless. He’s panting. He just got a call from the mainland, he says. Some people from the immigration service have asked for a quick lift over.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he tells me. ‘I delayed enough already.’

  Big’s coming downstairs, rubbing his eyes, but I sprint up past him. Top floor, dark corridor, aquamarine door. I burst in.

  La Roux is standing by the window. It is five-thirty a.m.

  ‘You’ve got to get out of here,’ I tell him, ‘the immigration people are coming. Maybe wait until they’re off the tractor and heading up here, then run around the back way and try crossing the water. It won’t be too deep. We’ll keep them busy in the meantime.’

  He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything.

  It’s bleak and bad and quiet and grey. It feels like we are dreaming.

  The Immigration People, when they arrive, are the Immigration Person. One woman. Called Sandy. Skinny. Polite. Hails originally from Saffron Walden. Owns a pug, called Maudsley, she tells Big pleasantly over a quick cup of tea. A pedigree.

  Believe it or not, she’s in no particular hurry.

  He was never going to make it over. Can’t swim. Too risky. And the tide’s still strong. They pick him up, later, in a rowing boat. He’s wandering around aimlessly, waist-high in the water. The whole thing isn’t even scary or frightening. Just sad, and strange and a little embarrassing.

  Chapter 18

  They tell us to pack the rest of his stuff together. So I go and I do it. The stupid white clay pipe, the cushion cover his mother made him, the picture of Spookie, his army pyjamas. His pony sweater.

  On my way downstairs Big calls out my name and scurries up and – almost apologetically – shoves two spare crochet needles and two balls of wool into my hands. Then he scuttles off again.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, Patch is still lying face-down on the pine table, sobbing uncontrollably. Feely is sitting on his bean-bag, just next to her, like a clucky hen, staring up at the ceiling where the fan’s revolving.

  I’m tearless, at this point, and resolving coldly to stay that way. But then something awful happens. On my way over to the mainland – the sea is gone, the sand is back, the beach is dry – Black Jack comes running down after me.

  ‘If you’re seeing him,’ he says, panting…

  ‘I’m not seeing him. I’m just dropping his stuff off at the Post Office. They’re picking it up later.

  ‘Well, anyway…’

  He puts his hands into his pockets and pulls out three slightly battered packets of Iced Gems, and a fully illustrated colour book of British birdlife. ‘I thought he might like these,’ he shrugs, ‘as something small to remember me by.’

  And that’s what finally gets me. The tears start welling and before I know it I’m bawling like a baby. And once I start, it’s difficult to think about stopping again. Because then, when I do, I know it will all truly be over. And he’ll be gone for ever. Back to South Africa. And military prison or wherever the hell they take people like him. And I know I’ll never see the skinny, self-centred, stupid, impolitic mother-fucker again.

  On my miserable trudge back home to the hotel, I glance up and see Poodle sitting on the wall at the edge of the balcony, swinging her legs and staring blankly out to sea. I walk over and stand in front of her, seething. She smiles down at me, unfocused, almost dreamy. ‘I can see Outer Hope quite clearly from here,’ she tells me idly, ‘it’s such a clear day.’

  ‘Christabel,’ I snap back at her, my voice as tight as a skinny-rib-sweater, ‘I will never, never forgive you for the thing you did today.’

  And I’m sixtee
n years old. And my nose is running. But I mean it. And I stand by it. I never will forgive her. Not ever.

  She just stares at me impassively. ‘I think you should know that Patch is going to have a baby,’ she says. Then she glances down the coast again like she finds the view captivating.

  That night, when I’m sleeping, a piece of glass falls out of the ceiling. Green glass. And smashes into a thousand pieces next to the safe, warm place where I’m lying and I’m dreaming. But not of Jack Henry. For some strange reason, he’s gone away. He’s left me.

  What more can I say? She was thirteen when she had it. A boy. She called it Michael. (How uninspired is that?) The father was fifteen and lived in Scilly. Mo came back. We moved to Skye. It was cold. It was weird. It was winter. And dreary.

  But before that, even, on the 18th of July, Jack Henry murdered a man called Richard Adan, a Cuban actor–waiter in a restaurant called the Boni-Bon. New York. Early one summer morning. For no particular reason. Then he went on the run. And they caught him. And they locked him up again.

  The book sold. It made him a fortune. And a short while after, a famous comedian contacted him in prison and bought the film rights for a quarter of a million.

  A few years later, when I’m a little older, I finally get to see a picture of Jack Henry Abbott. He’s not at all as I imagined. He has bouffant hair – this strange and audacious teddy-boy affair – like a pompadour. Jack Henry. A poseur. Who would have thought it?

  And Patch says, ‘I’m sure if I’d seen a picture, I would’ve felt differently about him way back then…’

  She’s a teenager now. She doesn’t know any better. And although I take her point, I’m not really sure if I agree with her…

  Well, not entirely, anyway.

  Here’s something funny. In 1995 I lose my older sister. She goes on some stupid skiing trip to Austria and ends up dead. At this stage, there’s only two of the family remaining in England. That’s Patch and me. So we go on a trip to the airport together, along with an undertaker, to collect the body.