And that’s when Patch tells me. ‘It wasn’t Poodle who phoned the immigration people, all those years ago,’ she says, staring up at the flight numbers, clutching a Styrofoam cup of coffee. ‘It wasn’t Poodle who betrayed La Roux, Medve. It was me. It was me.’
At first I’m not really listening. I don’t know what she’s saying. I can’t make sense of it.
‘Because he knew I was pregnant. But I swore him to secrecy. I thought if no one knew, then it would go away. So I set you both up in the cove that day. I thought Big’d get rid of him, after. But he didn’t. So I phoned them. The immigration people. And then later, when she put two and two together, Poodle said she’d pretend it was her. Because you were so angry. And I felt so terrible. And I was frightened.
‘She said you hated her anyway, so it wouldn’t really matter. But I suppose it did, in the end.’
I’m not looking at Patch. I’m staring up at the flight numbers. It’s eleven fifty-nine p.m. and fifty-seven seconds, and the screens are glowing, and my eyes are filling.
‘My God,’ I mutter, ‘did you know it was St Valentine’s Day?’
And as soon as I’ve uttered it, we’re in the day after.
I guess it’s time to pull those pins out. I’m getting quite dozy. I don’t know if I’ve been sleeping. But the acupuncturist returns and starts twiddling again. He takes out seven. ‘But the single one, in this ear,’ he says quietly, ‘I’m going to cover with a small plaster and leave there. So whenever you feel the urge you can give it a twirl, and hopefully it’ll help you.’
He does just as he says. Then I sit up and the bed creaks. He goes to the door. He passes through it, and into the reception area. He writes me out a bill and signs it. He hands it over. I take it.
‘You know what?’ he says casually, as I scrabble in my bag for my money. ‘I honestly believe you are sick enough and mad enough to walk out of here today without even openly acknowledging to me who the hell you are.’
I find my purse and open it.
‘Big spoke to your dad about a year ago. They bumped into each other on holiday in Florida. He said you were here, and I was in England for a while, so he wrote and he told me. ‘
La Roux shrugs his shoulders, like this is just an everyday occurrence, then asks me cordially about the family.
‘But I want to know first how you managed to stay here,’ I say. ‘I didn’t. I came back again in 1993. And I settled in Finchley. Then I moved to Tufnell Park. And I’ve grown quite attached to it actually.’
‘But what about the mousebird,’ I ask, frowning, ‘and the huge moths and the hail stones and the badly behaved apes near Cape Point who molest the tourists. And what about Grape Fanta?’
He smiles. ‘I can get that here now, if I feel the urge, at certain, specialist retailers. And you know what?’ he tells me, ‘I like British birds. Even though they’re kind of dowdy. I still have that book Black Jack sent me. I know the robin and the jay and the wren and the stonechat. I know their songs and their eating habits and their favoured terrain and everything.
‘In fact,’ he continues, grinning, ‘I was actually maid of honour at Black Jack’s wedding. He had a better man than me as best man already.’
I blink. ‘Black Jack? Somebody actually married him?’
‘Two years ago. He met this tiny Maori girl and settled in New Zealand near a place called Rotorua which is full of geysers and the smell of sulphur. And they have a whole theme park there dedicated to the kiwi fruit…’ He pauses. ‘You know, even though they grow it in South Africa, the first time I ever ate it was with you and Patch and Feely… Tell me about Feely,’ he says.
‘Oh God,’ I grin, ‘he’s living in Sydney, Australia. He’s a performance artist now. He sets fire to stuffed animals, puts them out by pissing on them, then paints himself with the wet, black ashes. It’s all ridiculously dramatic.
‘He’s in love with a man called Samson who has thirty-seven piercings. They have five miniature Schnausers together. He’s only four foot nine, but hugely muscular. He never got the regulation boy-growth-spurt in his mid-teens, which was problematic to begin with, but he eventually got over it.’
‘And Poodle?’ La Roux asks, still smiling. I pause and swallow.
‘She died in 1995. In February. On Valentine’s Day. From this crazy little blister she got when she was skiing in Austria. She got blood poisoning and it killed her. It was really stupid. It was just one of those improbable things…’
He looks briefly crestfallen. ‘Big never mentioned it,’ he says, ‘in any of his letters.’
‘He never talks about it. She was always his favourite.’
‘It seems like true beauty is destined to live a short life only,’ he says sadly.
For some reason this irritates me. ‘Talking of letters…’ I quickly change the subject, ‘I wanted to say thanks for the lovely lace penguin you sent from prison. It was very, very sweet of you.’
(Naturally I don’t mention how I still sleep with it, propped up on my pillow, and how I bought some tea tree oil from a New Age pharmacy and doused this scruffy, ill-constructed, flightless bird with it. Or how I smell it at night when I’m dreaming and it fills my head with hospital dramas and minor infections and the horrible prospect of clinical enemas.)
He shrugs. ‘It’s always hard to know what to send for a baby.’
(Oh Jesus. How embarrassing.)
‘Michael’, I stutter, reddening, ‘will be fifteen this year. He collects military medals and has a slow eye. He’s a revolting child but a real addition to the family.’
For some reason La Roux seems temporarily awestruck. ‘Do you think…’ he stutters ‘… she might’ve actually named him after me?’ And his eyes start welling. (Michael? Is he serious?! So is that where it came from?)
‘And you, Medve?’ he mumbles finally.
So I tell him how I trained to be a solicitor, because of stupid Jack Henry, and how I hated myself for hating him when he betrayed us all so badly, and how I married a Grand Larcenist called Jordan while I was practising in America. And how it lasted for six months and then we wanted to kill each other (He likes this bit especially. He’s still a little shit, when it finally comes down to it).
And then I tell him how Big is living in Acapulco, with his second wife who’s a dietician. How he still lives on soya and has a beard to his breastbone. And how Mo married Bob Ranger in the end, but they were never really very happy, but how the Probe might finally be becoming a viable proposition, fifteen years later (God, who would have thought it?), and how she’s writing a definitive text about the coil which is due for publication next February (but only in non-Catholic countries).
‘The coil?’ La Roux asks, dumbly.
‘A form of contraception popular in the seventies,’ I tell him.
‘Oh.’
And then the conversation fizzles out, and to avoid resorting to talking about the weather and how he’s losing his hair a little, and how his sideburns are preposterous, I make a fuss about settling the bill and how much better I feel already with the pin in my lobe and all the rest of that crap. Then his three-thirty appointment arrives, a woman with a limp like a Grand National faller. And then it’s time I was going. And I say goodbye. And I leave him. And it’s over. It’s all finally over. And I walk down the street, swinging my arms and congratulating myself on what a good plan it was to see him, and how well it went and everything. How glad I was I didn’t mention that it was Patch who turned him in, not Poodle. How glad I was I didn’t still blame him for making me hate my bigger sister and how she went and died so inconsiderately without me ever getting around to forgiving her. Or her forgiving me.
I walk into the station. I feed my ticket into the machine and retrieve it when it spits it out again. I walk down onto the platform. I push my hand into my bag and pull out some notes on a case I’m thinking about taking. A man who killed a neighbour’s cockerel because it woke him every morning at three a.m.
I’ve learned s
omething, I keep telling myself (but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if I care). I tap my foot. I inspect my watch. The platform fills up, gradually. The station master makes an announcement that there’s five more minutes until the train arrives. Because someone went under at Mile End. Again. Poor fucker.
I look down at my notes. I think I’m really concentrating. Then there’s some kind of commotion at the end of the platform. I keep on reading. The cockerel was called Jasper and it lived in a kennel.
The yelling continues. It’s something indecipherable. I notice that I’m frowning because suddenly I’m not concentrating. The voice is getting louder still.
‘The girl penis!’ it’s shouting. ‘Do you remember? The girl penis! It changed my fucking life. I forgot to tell you. I needed to tell you.’
He stands, out of breath, next to me on the platform. And every-body’s frowning because he’s a South African.
‘I just wanted to tell you,’ he gasps, ‘about the girl penis and how it changed everything. It was a revelation.’
He collapses on to a bench, his skinny legs sticking out at all angles. ‘And I’ve got something,’ he pants cheerily, ‘that I wanted to show you.’
He pulls it out of his pocket. His face is glistening. I sit down next to him, cautiously. He opens his hand and shows me. A small, red, plastic centipede, browning with age.
‘My God, you kept it?’
He nods. ‘Fished it up from the bottom of the cove. Took me almost two hours.’
He shrugs apologetically, as if he doesn’t want me to make too much of it. ‘I’m such a hoarder, I’d hoard my own arse if it wasn’t already attached to me.’
He leans away and inspects my profile. ‘You know, I’ve missed that chin,’ he says, ‘and I’m glad you’ve remained as implausibly tall as ever.’
Then he takes a deep breath and slaps his knees and makes as if he’s readying himself to leave again. ‘I’ve got someone waiting,’ he confides, ‘back at the surgery with one of the worst arthritic heels I’ve ever yet had the privilege of encountering.’ (The thought seems to excite him enormously.)
‘My train’s just coming, anyway,’ I tell him, pointing aimlessly towards the tunnel. ‘And I’ve got work to do.’
He raises an imperious ginger eyebrow. I show him the case notes. ‘I’m thinking of defending some guy who murdered a cockerel called Jason which lived in a kennel and crowed every morning at three a.m.’
La Roux scowls.
‘Oh fuck,’ I say. ‘You love hens. I forgot. Sorry.’
I put the papers away as he stands up and distractedly unfastens his white overall and reveals one of the most offensive tie-dye sweaters I’ve ever yet laid eyes upon (in all of my hideously multifarious hippie incarnations).
‘Well, Medve,’ he smiles ingratiatingly, ‘I certainly hope you’re well on your way to giving up that demon weed.’
He holds out his hand as if he wants to shake mine. I do the same. We shake. We let go again.
‘If you must know, I don’t actually smoke,’ I mutter.
‘That’s good then,’ he mutters back, ‘because I’m not really an acupuncturist.’ He shrugs. ‘I trained as a tailor.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Of course I am, stupid,’ and then he starts chuckling in that maddeningly flat, South African way I well remember from years ago. ‘My Lord,’ he sniggers, ‘I could always play you like a fiddle.’
In fact, he finds the whole thing so amusing he even slaps his bony thigh. I peek in his mouth as he’s laughing. He’s still got terrible teeth, I tell myself, just as bad as I remember. And he still stinks of tea tree. And his skin is still awful. And as if things weren’t bad enough already, he seems to have started wearing the worst kind of thick, yellow, plastic-soled, all-animal-product-free shoes with huge silver buckles.
I bet, I think to myself, he’s become a vegetarian, and that he makes the whole world suffer for it. And, you know, it kind of makes me like him even better. But I tell myself it doesn’t.
He leans against the wall and we’re both quiet for a while. I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what. Then I hear the train coming from deep down in the tunnel. I push my heels together and I pick up my bag, and I firm my resolve. It’s time I was going.
‘Still play a mean game of ping-pong?’ La Roux asks casually, over the increasing racket. But soon the roar is too loud for me to say anything, and my stupid hair blows everywhere, and the brakes squeak, and the doors swish open. And everybody clambers off. And then everybody else clambers on again.
And still, still – for some utterly inexplicable reason – I’m sitting on the bench and he’s leaning against the wall. And the doors shut. And the train leaves. And the seconds slowly tick by in a glorious infinity as we both quietly wait and idly wonder what my final answer will be.
About the author
NICOLA BARKER’s eight novels include Darkmans (short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden), and Wide Open (winner of the 2000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short stories, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in east London.
Praise
From the reviews of Five Miles From Outer Hope:
‘Makes you wince, gasp and laugh out loud’
MAGGIE O’FARRELL, Independent on Sunday
‘At times comic and whimsical, sometimes sad, Five Miles From Outer Hope is always fresh, original and tightly written’
The Times
‘This novel, which cleverly sidesteps the traps of earnestness and seriousness, could well be read as a sort of literary tonic for enervation and grumpiness, the latest welcome dispatch from Barker’s determinedly perverse and ungovernable imagination’
Guardian
By the same author
Love Your Enemies
Reversed Forecast
Small Holdings
Heading Inland
Wide Open
Behindlings
Clear
Darkmans
Burley Cross Postbox Theft
Credits
Cover photographs © Wolfgang Kaehler/
Corbis (wood design); Louie Psihoyos/
Getty Images (bird).
Cover Design by Leo Nickolls
Copyright
Copyright © Nicola Barker 2000
Nicola Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007462506
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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