The Yips

He shuts his eyes again. He suddenly has a headache. He thinks about the coffee. He can definitely smell coffee. He needs a coffee. He opens his eyes, turns his head and peers off to his right. (Might there be a door to this room so that he can eventually get –)

WHAH!

Ransom yelps, startled, snatching at the duvet. Two women – complete strangers! – are standing by the bed and staring down at him, inquisitively. Not two women. No. Not …

A woman and a girl. Yes. But the woman isn’t a woman, she is a priest (in her black shirt and dog collar), and the girl isn’t a girl, she’s … What is she? He inspects the girl, horrified. She’s half a girl. The lower section of her face is … It’s missing. A catastrophe. It’s gone walkabout. Or if not quite missing, exactly, then … uh … a work in progress. A mess of wire and scar and scaffolding.

The girl registers his disquiet and quickly covers her jaw with her hand. Ransom immediately switches his gaze back to the priest again, embarrassed.

‘Thank goodness he’s finally awake,’ the priest murmurs, relieved.

The half-faced girl nods, emphatically. She is wearing a school uniform. Her hair is in two, neat plaits.

‘I don’t recognize him,’ she whispers, from behind her hand. ‘Dad said he was really famous, but I don’t recognize him at all.’

It takes a while for Ransom to fully decipher her jumbled speech, and when he finally succeeds he feels an odd combination of satisfaction and disgruntlement.

‘Ssshh!’ the priest cautions her.

‘Where am I?’ Ransom croaks, trying to lift his head.

‘You’re in my bedroom,’ the girl promptly answers.

‘I left you to lie in for as long as I could,’ the priest tells him (rather brusquely, Ransom feels). ‘Gene left for work several hours ago. But Mallory needs to go to school and I’m scheduled to meet the bishop in Northampton at ten …’ She checks the time. ‘I don’t have the slightest clue where Stan is right now, so …’

She shrugs.

‘Oh.’

Ransom feels overwhelmed by an excess of information.

‘I like your feet.’ The girl chuckles, pointing.

After a short period of deciphering, Ransom peers down at his feet. He can see nothing particularly remarkable or amusing about them.

‘Thanks,’ he says, just the same, and then slips a hand under the duvet to check he’s still decent (he is – just about).

‘Your clothes are folded up on the stool,’ the priest says, pointing to a pile of clothes folded up on a pink stool.

‘I folded them,’ the girl says.

Ransom lightly touches his head. He suddenly feels a little dizzy. And he feels huge. It’s a strange feeling. Because it’s not just his actual, physical size, it’s also his … it’s … it’s …

‘I suddenly feel a bit …’

‘Nauseous?’ the priest fills in, anxiously. ‘There’s a bucket next to the bed if you’re …’

‘If he’s sick in my bed I’ll just die!’ the girl exclaims.

‘… big,’ Ransom finally concludes. ‘I suddenly feel very … very big. Very large.’

He pauses. ‘And conspicuous,’ he adds, ‘and vulnerable.’ He shudders (impressing himself inordinately with how frank and brave and articulate he’s being).

Nobody says anything. They just stare down at him again, silently.

‘I’ve brought you some coffee,’ the woman eventually mutters. She proffers him a cup.

‘If he’s sick in my bed I’ll just die!’ the girl repeats, still more emphatically.

‘I feel like I’m trapped inside this weird, fish-eye lens,’ Ransom continues, holding out his hands in front of his face and wiggling his fingers, ‘like I’m –’

‘There should be a little water left in the boiler,’ the priest interrupts him, ‘enough for a quick shower. You can use the pink towel. It’s clean. And you can help yourself to some cereal, but I’m afraid we’re all out of –’

‘Not the pink towel, Mum!’ Mallory whispers, imploringly. ‘Not my towel!’

‘It’s the only clean towel we’ve got,’ the priest explains. ‘I haven’t had time to do the –’

‘But it’s –’

‘Enough, Mallory!’ the priest reprimands her, pushing the coffee cup into Ransom’s outstretched hands. ‘You’re already late for school. Did you pack up your lunch yet?’

The girl slowly shakes her head.

‘Well hadn’t you better go and do it, then?’

They turn for the door.

‘I won’t use the pink towel,’ Ransom pipes up.

The priest glances over her shoulder at him, irritably.

‘I won’t have a shower,’ Ransom says, intimidated (she is intimidating). ‘I can always have one when I get back to the hotel.’

‘Fine.’ She shrugs. ‘But if you do decide to …’

‘I won’t,’ he insists. ‘So don’t fret,’ he yells after the girl. ‘Your towel is safe.’

He carefully props himself up on to his elbow and takes a quick sip of his coffee, then winces (it’s instant – bad instant).

‘Where am I, exactly?’ he asks, but nobody’s listening. They’ve already left him.

‘Where am I, exactly?’ he asks again, more ruminatively this time, pretending – as a matter of pride – that he was only ever really posing this question – and in a purely metaphysical sense, of course – to himself.

* * *

Gene knocks on the door and then waits. After a few seconds he inspects his watch, grimaces, knocks again, then stares, blankly, at the decorative panes of stained glass inside the door’s three, main panels. In his hands he holds the essential tools of his trade: a small mirror (hidden within a slightly dented metal powder compact, long denuded of its powder), a miniature torch (bottle green in colour, the type a film critic might use) and a clipboard (with his plastic, identification badge pinned on to the front of it).

No answer.

He studies his watch again, frowning. He knocks at the door for a third time, slightly harder, and realizes, as he does so, that the door isn’t actually shut, just loosely pulled to.

He scowls, cocks his head and listens. He thinks he can hear the buzz of an electric razor emerging from inside. He pushes the door ajar and pops his head through the gap.

‘Hello?’ he calls.

No answer. Still the hum of the razor.

‘HELLO?’ Gene repeats, even louder. ‘Is anybody home?’

The razor is turned off for a moment.

‘Upstairs!’ a voice yells back (a female voice, an emphatic voice). ‘In the bathroom!’

Gene frowns. He pushes the door wider. The razor starts up again.

‘HELLO?’

The razor is turned off again (with a sharp tut).

‘The bathroom!’ the voice repeats, even more emphatically. ‘Upstairs!’

The razor is turned on again.

Gene gingerly steps into the hallway. He closes the door behind him. The hallway is long and thin with the original – heavily cracked – blue and brown ceramic tiles on the floor. There are two doors leading off from it (one directly to his left and one at the far end of the corridor, beyond the stairway. Both are currently closed, although the buzz of the razor appears to be emerging from the door that’s further off).

The stairs lie directly ahead of him. Gene hesitates for a moment and then moves towards them. At the foot of the stairs is a small cupboard. He has already visited seven similar properties on this particular road and he knows for a fact that in all seven of the aforementioned properties the electricity meter is comfortably stored inside this neat, custom-made aperture. Gene pauses, stares at the cupboard, then reaches out a tentative hand towards it.

His fingers are just about to grip the handle when –

‘UPSTAIRS!’

The woman yells.

Gene quickly withdraws his hand. He sighs. He shakes his head. He gazes up the stairs, with a measure of foreboding.

‘THE BATHROOM!’ the voice re-emphasizes, quite urgently. ‘QUICK!’

Gene starts climbing the stairs. Sitting on the landing at the top of the stairs is a large, long-haired tabby cat which coolly appraises his grudging ascent. When he reaches the landing it turns and darts off, ears pricked, tail high, jinking a sharp left into an adjacent room which – from the particular quality of the light flowing from it – Gene takes to be the bathroom. Gene follows the cat into this room and then draws to a sharp halt.

The bathroom (his hunch proved correct) is crammed full of cats. Five cats, to be exact. One cat is perched on the windowsill (the window is slightly ajar) and it takes fright on his entering (leaping to its feet, hackles rising, hissing), then squeezes through the gap and promptly disappears. Three others – with rather more sanguine dispositions – are arranged on the worn linoleum in a polite semicircle around the edge of the bath. The fifth cat – and the boldest – is sitting on the corner of the bath itself, closest to the taps.

The bath – an old bath, long and narrow, with heavily chipped enamel – is currently full of water. Next to the bath (and the cats) is an old, metal watering can which Gene inadvertently kicks on first entering. He exclaims as his toe makes contact, but it isn’t so much the can (or his clumsiness) that he’s exclaiming at. He is exclaiming – with a mixture of surprise and consternation – at the rat.

There is a rat in the bath – a large, brown rat – doggy-paddling aimlessly around. Gene bends down and slowly adjusts the watering can, his eyes glued to the rodent.

It is huge – at least twelve inches in length (excluding the tail) – and it is plainly exhausted. As Gene quietly watches, it suddenly stops swimming and tries to stand up, but the water is too deep. It goes under for a second, panics, and then returns to the surface again, spluttering.

Gene is no great fan of rats – or of rodents, in general – yet he can’t help but feel moved by this particular one’s predicament.

‘I suppose I’d better get you out of there, eh?’ he mutters, popping the torch between his teeth, transferring the powder compact into the hand with the clipboard, reaching down and calmly grabbing its tail.

The rat is heavier than he anticipated as it exits the water. He observes (from its prodigious testicles) that it is male. ‘How long’ve you been in there, huh?’ Gene chuckles, through clenched teeth, as it jerks and swings through the air, legs scrabbling, frantic to escape.

The cats all commence padding around below it. Two rise on to their back haunches, paws tentatively raised.

‘Sod off!’ Gene knees a cat out of the way and lifts the rat higher, suddenly rather protective of it. The rat gives up its struggle, relaxes and just hangs there, limply.

‘Very sensible,’ Gene commends it. He peers around the bathroom (to check there’s nothing left in there to detain him), then slowly processes downstairs carrying the rat, gingerly, ahead of him (followed by a furry, feline train).

He pauses for a second in the hallway, unsure of what to do next. He decides (spurred on by the sound of voices) to consult with the opinionated female on this issue – presumably the home-owner – and so pads down the corridor.

It is difficult for him to knock (or to speak, for that matter, with the torch still gripped between his teeth) so he simply bangs on the door with his elbow and shoves it open with his shoulder.

He is not entirely prepared for the sight that greets him. He blinks. The room is cream-coloured – cream walls, cream blinds, imbued with an almost surgical atmosphere – and flooded with artificial light. A crouching woman with red lips and quiffed, auburn hair (tied up, forces’ sweetheart-style, in a neatly knotted, polka-dotted scarf), gasps as he enters. Another woman – dark-haired, semi-naked, her back to him (thank heaven for small mercies!) – propped up on a special, padded bench, is inspecting her own genitals in a small, hand-held mirror, as the first woman (the gasping woman) shines a tiny torch into the requisite area. The rat begins to struggle.

Gene immediately backs out of the room, horrified. The door swings shut on its hinges. He retreats down the corridor, hearing an excitable discussion taking place inside (crowned by several, muttered apologies, then rapid footsteps). The door opens. The auburn-haired woman stands before him. She is wearing a white, plastic, disposable apron and matching disposable gloves. She is still holding the torch. She seems furious, then terrified (on seeing the rat, close at hand) then furious again.

He notices that her auburn hair is quaintly pin-curled underneath the scarf (which reminds him – with a sudden, painful stab of emotion – of his beloved late grandmother, who once used to curl her hair in exactly this manner). The woman is slight but curvaceous (the kind of girl who at one time might’ve been lovingly etched on to the nose of a spitfire) with a sweet, heart-shaped face (he sees a sprinkling of light freckles under her make-up), two perfectly angular, black eyebrows and a pair of wide, dark blue eyes, the top lids of which are painstakingly liquid-linered. Her lips are a deep, poppy red, although her lipstick – he notes, fascinated – is slightly smudged at one corner.

‘Who are you?’ she demands, flapping her hands at him to move him further on down the hallway. ‘What on earth d’you think you’re doing?’

‘I’ve come to read the …’

Gene lifts the clipboard, trying not to trip up over the cats, his speech (through the torch) somewhat slurred. Both parties notice, at the same moment, that their torches are identical.

‘I should probably …’ He lifts the struggling rat.

The woman darts past him (he registers the solid sound of her heels on the tiles), yanks the door open and shoves him outside. Gene drops the rat into the tiny, paved, front garden and it immediately seeks shelter behind a group of bins.

‘I thought you were my brother!’ the woman exclaims.

Gene spits out his torch. ‘I came to read your meter,’ he stutters, ‘but the door was ajar and when I …’

A phone commences ringing in the hallway behind her. It has an old-fashioned ring. It is an old-fashioned phone: black, square, Bakelite, perched on a tall, walnut table, just along from a large aspidistra in a jardinière. Gene frowns. He has no recollection of noticing either the phone or the plant on first entering the hallway a short while earlier.

The woman turns to inspect the phone, then turns back to face him again.

‘Stay there,’ she mutters, glowering. ‘I should answer that.’

She slams the door shut.

Gene waits on the step as a brief conversation takes place inside. He glances around him, looking for the rat. He inspects his watch again. He dries his torch on his shirt-front. The door opens.

‘It was just a bit of a shock …’ the woman explains, calmer now.

‘Of course.’ Gene grimaces. ‘I really should have knocked. I just –’

‘We have the same torch,’ she interrupts him, pointing.

‘Yes.’ Gene nods.

‘Mine’s a little unreliable,’ the woman confides, flipping it on and then off again.

‘There’s this tiny spring inside the top.’ Gene points to the top of her torch, where the spring is situated. ‘I actually ended up replacing the one in mine.’

The woman studies the torch for a moment and then peers up at him, speculatively. ‘I suppose I should thank you for getting rid of the rat …’ She indicates, somewhat querulously, towards the bins. ‘I ran a bath a couple of hours ago, popped downstairs to fetch the watering can …’ She pauses (as if some kind of explanation might be in order, but then fails to provide one). ‘And when I came back …’

She shudders.

Gene struggles to expel a sudden vision in his mind of her reclining, soapily, in the tub. He clears his throat. ‘It was nothing,’ he mutters, then stares at the corner of her lip, fixedly, where her lipstick is smudged.

‘Well thanks for that, anyway,’ she says, her mouth tightening, self-consciously. He quickly adjusts his gaze and notices a light glow of perspiration on her forehead, then a subtle glint of moisture on her upper lip, a touch of shine on her chin, a further, gentle glimmer on her breastbone …

He quickly averts his gaze again.

‘I’m actually …’ She glances over her shoulder, frowning. ‘I’m actually in a bit of a fix’ – she leans forward and gently tips his clipboard towards her so that she can read the name on his identification badge – ‘Eugene,’ she clumsily finishes off.

Gene can’t help noticing her bare arms as she leans towards him. Her arms are very smooth. Utterly hairless. Slightly freckled. Her skin has a strange kind of … of texture to it and exudes – his nose twitches – a slight aroma of incense (Cedarwood? Sandalwood? Frankincense? Musk?).

Under her semi-transparent plastic apron, she’s wearing a strangely old-fashioned, tight, cap-sleeved khaki shirt (in the military style), unfastened to the breastbone with a jaunty, cotton turquoise bra (frilled in shocking red nylon) peeking out from between the buttons.

Gene blinks and looks lower. On her bottom half he can make out a pair of dark, wide-cut denims, rolled up to the knee. On her feet, some round-toed, turquoise shoes with neat ankle straps and high, straight heels.

‘… I mean I know it’s a little cheeky of me,’ she’s saying, ‘but it’s only eight doors down. The other side of the road – number nineteen …’

‘Pardon?’

Gene tries to re-focus.

‘My niece. I have to go and fetch her. It’s just …’ – she indicates over her shoulder – ‘I really should get back to my client. She wasn’t very happy about …’

She winces.

Gene stares at her for a moment, confused.

‘And if you’re headed in that direction anyway …’

He finally realizes what she’s getting at. ‘Oh. Wow. You mean you want me to go and …?’

‘Would you mind?’ She bites down on her lower lip.

‘Uh, no. No. Of course not. It’s fine,’ Gene insists. He glances up the road, appalled.

‘I’d go myself’ – she indicates over her shoulder again – ‘it’s just that I really should …’

‘Of course.’

Gene nods, emphatically. They stare at each other, wordlessly, in a strange kind of agony, like two distant acquaintances who’ve just met up, arbitrarily, in the waiting room of a VD clinic.

‘So what’s her name?’ Gene finally enquires.

‘Her name? Uh …’ She puts a tentative hand to her headscarf. ‘You know I honestly can’t remember …’ She frowns. ‘Isn’t that terrible? Something unpronounceable, like … like Hokakushi …’ Her frown deepens. ‘Or Hokusha. It’s Japanese.’

‘Your niece is Japanese?’ Gene deadpans.

‘My niece?’ The woman looks mystified, then mortified. ‘Oh God! Sorry …’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ve been up all night. I’m not firing on all cylinders, obviously. My niece … My niece. My niece is called Nessie. Nessa. And the woman who’s minding her is called Sasha …’ She pauses, sheepishly. ‘And I’m Valentine.’

She holds out a gloved hand. Gene reaches out his own, in automatic response, but before their fingers can touch, she quickly withdraws hers, apologizing, and starts trying to remove the plastic glove, muttering something about ‘needing to maintain hygiene’.

‘Don’t worry.’ Gene smiles, taking a small step back. ‘I should probably …’

‘Yes …’ Valentine’s eyes are now lingering on his wedding ring. ‘Well I suppose I’d better …’ She thumbs over her shoulder. ‘My poor client …’

‘Absolutely.’ Gene takes another step. He inspects his watch. She remains where she is, though, still gazing at him. He isn’t sure why, exactly.

‘You have the original glass,’ he mumbles, pointing, somewhat uneasily.

‘Pardon?’

‘The original glass panels, in the door …’ He can gradually feel his colour rising. ‘You’re one of the only houses left on the street.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Yeah. The glass …’ Valentine peers across at it, fondly. ‘My dad always loved it. He was completely obsessed by this period of design. I guess you could say it was his …’

Gene suddenly turns – while she’s still talking – and hurries down the short path, then out of the garden (the gate swings gently behind him). He knows it’s a little strange. He knows it’s a little rude. And even as he’s walking – just as soon as he starts walking – he’s reproaching himself for it (‘What is this? What are you playing at? Are you crazy?!’).

Valentine watches him go, surprised. He senses her blue eyes upon him, and feels – possibly for the first time in his adult life – an excruciating awareness of all his physical shortcomings. He automatically lifts his chin and pushes back his shoulders. He tightens his stomach. But even as he does so he’s haranguing himself for it, lambasting himself for it (‘You bloody fool. This is ridiculous. This is laughable’). His body feels leaden and yet light, all at once. His chest feels too small to contain his breath. He longs – above everything – to escape, to bolt, to flee. It’s as much as he can do not to break into a sprint.

‘They’re Gene’s,’ a sullen voice announces. ‘All of them.’

‘Huh?’

Ransom glances up, startled. He’s just been idly rifling through a deep drawer in a heavy, dark (and profoundly unfashionable) Victorian sideboard in a somewhat cramped and boxy sitting room. In one hand he holds a bowl of cereal (mini shredded-wheat, drenched in milk, which he’s eating with a fork), in the other he holds a medal. The person sullenly addressing him is a boy – a short, thick-set teenager with a dense mop of black hair (carefully arranged to hang, with a fastidious lopsidedness, over one eye) and a copy of Bruce Lee’s Artist of Life propped under his elbow.

‘I don’t know why he keeps them there,’ the boy continues, stolidly. ‘He’s got dozens of the stupid things. Mum’s always nagging at him to display them properly.’

‘I was looking for a spoon.’ Ransom quickly drops the medal back into the drawer, adjusts the towel he’s wearing (a pink towel) and turns to engage with the boy directly.

‘You finished the milk,’ the boy mutters, darting Ransom’s cereal bowl a petulant look before silently retreating.

Ransom glances down at his bowl, shrugs, devours another forkful, saunters over to a nearby bookshelf and casually scans the books on display there. After a brief inspection he soon deduces that the books are divided – by and large – into two main categories: the military and the spiritual. Ransom instinctively shrinks from the religious side and focuses his attention on the military end instead. Here, his eyes run over Clausewitz’s On War, Conrad Lorenz’s On Aggression, Richard Holmes’s Acts of War, then rest – for a brief interlude – on Wendy Holden’s Shell Shock. He carefully places down his bowl and pulls it out, opening it, randomly: ‘Too many people are jumping on the trauma bandwagon,’ he reads, ‘in a society where to be a victim confers on people a state of innocence.’

He scowls, tips the book over and inspects the cover, then slaps it shut and shoves it, carelessly, back into the shelves again. Next he removes the Clausewitz. ‘The element of chance, only, is wanting to make of war a game,’ he reads, ‘there is no human affair which stands so constantly and so generally in close connection with chance as war …’ He scratches his head, intrigued. ‘War is a game both objectively and subjectively …’ he continues, and then, ‘Every activity in war necessarily relates to the combat, either directly or indirectly. The soldier is levied, clothed, armed, exercised, he sleeps, eats, drinks and marches all merely to fight at the right time and place.’

Ransom ponders this for a moment and then places the book under his arm, grabs Richard Holmes’s Acts of War, and quickly flips through it, pausing for a moment, beguiled, at a section that discusses how man’s aggressive drive is inherited from his anthropoid ancestors. This genetic legacy apparently inclines him to fight members of his own species. Most other creatures, he discovers, avoid lethal combat with their own kind by employing a series of simple mechanisms like a pecking order, the ritualization of combat etc. Piranhas generally prefer to attack other piranhas with their tails rather than their teeth. Rattlesnakes air their grievances not by biting other rattlers but through bouts of wrestling …

‘Brilliant!’