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‘I guess what people generally tend to forget,’ Ransom mutters (his mind turning back, momentarily, to Jen, and the previous night in the hotel bar), ‘is that Karma was basically a nobody when she and I first hooked up. Just another very boring, very ambitious French model in a long line of very boring, very ambitious French models. I was never serious about her. I’d recently split with Suzanne Amour. Karma was essentially just rebound fodder …’
Ransom pauses to gauge Stan’s reaction to the Suzanne Amour revelation (there isn’t one).
‘Now Suzanne really was sensational,’ Ransom persists. ‘Really crazy. Really wild. Had the weirdest, cutest little vagina you ever saw, kinda like an inside-out flower, like a sea-anemone …’
Ransom describes the shape of Suzanne Amour’s strange vagina in the air with his finger.
‘A complete one-off. In all my years of pussy, I’ve never seen another like it – not even when I fucked her sister.’
Stan looks slightly uneasy.
‘She was probably a little before your time …’ Ransom shrugs. ‘An exotic dancer – the former girlfriend of Plastic Bertrand.’
Stan now looks utterly bemused.
‘The punk singer. “Ça Plane Pour Moi”?’
Stan shakes his head, apologetically.
‘Yeah. Well the point I’m trying to make here is that Karma was pretty much a nobody back then. She’d done an advert for this second-rate brand of pantyhose. She had a great pair of legs. Amazing legs. In fact she still has great legs – although the tits are a complete fabrication. The tits are just a big, old lie, a huge lie, I can promise you that … Anyhow, the truth was that I was the big star at that stage. Aside from Faldo, I was basically the biggest thing to happen in European golf for years …’ He pauses for a second, thoughtfully. ‘Though – credit where credit’s due – Karma always really believed in herself. It’s like – I dunno – people sometimes say that to be a star you have to think like a star, and Karma always thought like a star. She always acted “The Star”. She was ridiculously, high-maintenance, even back then. My old jeep was the bane of her life. She loathed that jeep. In fact …’ – Ransom scowls as he remembers – ‘no … She actually loved the jeep to begin with. Yeah, typical female – she fuckin’ loved the jeep. And I’m like the wild, crazy, English kid with the jeep. She thinks the jeep is brilliant; it’s so funny and cool and eccentric. Then the next thing you know, we’ve been dating for about a week and she’s griping on about her hair getting messed up every time we head out in the damn thing …’
‘So you didn’t get to check out the poster?’ (Stan just wants to make absolutely sure.)
‘What?’
Ransom’s momentarily thrown off his stride.
‘In my room. The huge film poster? It covers an entire wall.’
‘Nope.’ Ransom shakes his head, then winces. ‘I didn’t actually see anything. I just dragged myself out of bed and stood shivering under the shower for half an hour …’ He massages his temples. ‘For the record: the water pressure in your bathroom is completely, fuckin’ abysmal.’
‘It’s from Lady Spellbound,’ Stan elucidates, ‘the Polish version. My dad got it for me on a trip to Warsaw. He has a friend who runs this independent cinema over there.’
Ransom looks blank.
‘Lady Spellbound?’ Stan reiterates. ‘The first of The Vala Chronicles? The original merchandise from that film is worth a small fortune now. English versions sell for, like, three thousand pounds on eBay …’
‘Lady …’ Ransom frowns for a second and then, ‘Oh God – yeah. Now I’m with you. I’ve actually never seen the thing.’
‘Never seen Lady Spellbound?!’ Stan parrots, astonished.
‘Nope.’ Ransom shakes his head. ‘But isn’t it meant to be really terrible?’
‘Oh … uh …’
Stan quickly reassesses the situation. ‘Yeah … Well I mean it’s basically just a kids’ film’ – he shrugs – ‘although Bill Murray’s pretty good in it. Has this great cameo …’
‘I played a pro-am tournament with Murray once,’ Ransom recollects; ‘he’s actually a very handy player. On the third day he turned up at the clubhouse wearing this long, blonde wig, the hair all …’
Ransom gesticulates, wildly. ‘Man. I laughed till I bawled.’
‘Because he wore a wig?’ Stan frowns.
‘Duh!’ Ransom’s patently astonished at the kid’s ignorance. ‘He wore it as a piss-take, obviously!’
‘A piss-take of what?’
Stan’s still frowning.
‘Of what?! Are you crazy?! My hair, Dumbo! A piss-take of the legendary Stuart Ransom coiffure!’
Stan looks lost for a few seconds and then, suddenly, ‘Oh yeah. Yeah …’ A slow grin starts to ambush his face. ‘Weren’t you nearly chucked off a tournament once because it was such an unbelievable bird’s nest?’
‘Bingo!’
Ransom high-fives him again.
‘And then you claimed in all the papers that you couldn’t brush it because some loopy fan had …’
‘Stolen my hairbrush! Yeah!’ Ransom’s beatific. ‘And I was deadly, fuckin’ serious. She had stolen it. But they still refused to let me compete, so as a compromise, I plaited it. Two plaits. The plaits were like this massive sensation. Everyone went wild about them. I was front page news in all the papers for about a week. Got a huge spread in Playgirl. Ridiculous, really, when you actually come to think about it …’
‘Crazy,’ Stan agrees (perhaps too readily).
‘Although this was way before Beckham had his mohawk,’ Ransom rallies. ‘Way before all the drama with the sarong. It was the German Open. I actually won that year.’
‘Stealing a hairbrush …’ Stan muses (apparently very taken by the idea). ‘That’s seriously deluded.’
‘Yup. Mandy Pope.’ Ransom rolls his eyes. ‘Canadian Druid. Total fuckin’ nutter. Stalked me for seven years. I had a restraining order out on her. She’d break into my flat while I was off on tour, steal my jockeys and leave these weird, little messages inside my coffee jar …’
‘A Canadian Druid …?’ Stan ruminates. ‘That’s retarded.’
‘Tell me about it!’ Ransom clucks. ‘Total fuckin’ headcase, she was. But it only gets better,’ he continues. ‘I saw a list of the hundred most visited sites on the internet a while back and nearly puked when I saw her blog close to the top of it.’
‘No way!’
Stan’s impressed.
‘You’d better believe it, kid. Mandy fuckin’ Pope. Gets arrested for stealing my jockeys one week, the next she’s at the head of an international fuckin’ faith empire.’
‘That’s sick!’ Stan’s deeply amused.
A short silence follows as they both appraise the Hummer again.
‘So your dad’s a Pole?’
Stan nods.
‘You speak any Polish?’
‘Some.’
‘Can you get me a coffee, please?’ Ransom demands.
‘Get your own, Monkey-knob,’ Stan responds.
‘Not bad!’ Ransom nods, approvingly.
‘Thanks.’
‘Are you studying it at school?’
‘Nope. At tech. My school doesn’t currently have –’
‘Brilliant,’ Ransom interrupts. ‘So shall we take this little beauty out for a quick spin now, or what?’
Stan turns to stare at him, shocked.
Ransom leans forward and tries the handle on the door for a second time. The door is – unsurprisingly – still locked.
‘I bet I can get this thing moving without a key,’ Ransom brags.
Stan, meanwhile, is reaching into the pocket of his baggy jeans and feeling around for something. He eventually locates what he’s looking for and withdraws it.
‘You know, basketball’s one of the few sports I’ve never really followed,’ Ransom ruminates (sensing imminent defeat on the Hummer front). ‘The skill sets are just so different to those in golf. Although I was playing this tournament in the Dominican Republic a while back …’
He peers over at Stan and then abruptly falls silent. Stan is carefully unfolding a clean, white, cotton handkerchief. Lying in the middle of it is a long, fat, neatly pre-rolled joint.
‘It’s really good shit,’ he confides, proudly, as Ransom reaches out to grab it with a delighted whoop. ‘I got it at Christian camp.’
Chapter 3 (#ulink_99e641d8-0efb-5277-955d-5ce31f221206)
‘Leave it. It’s fine. It doesn’t need mending.’ Gene tries to grab the jacket from her. ‘It’s not like I ever wear the thing – it’s just a keepsake …’
‘So when were you planning to tell me, exactly?’
His wife refuses to give the jacket up. She plumps it down on to her lap and starts rooting around inside an old biscuit tin for a reel of thread in an appropriate colour. She is still wearing her dog collar, but her hair (usually drawn back into a scruffy bun) has been recently washed and hangs down in loose, damp curls across her shoulders. Her face – generally calm but serious, even solemn – currently looks drawn and stressed. Gene notices dark rings around her brown eyes, which – as always – are utterly devoid of make-up.
‘I mean if that girl from your work hadn’t phoned …’ She frowns. ‘Jess. Jane …’
‘Jen.’
He notices some tinges of grey around her temples. He inspects her eyebrows. They are thick and un-plucked, but their line is still good, still shapely and graceful. She is attractive, he decides, but in a natural way – unadorned – homely.
Homely? No. He frowns. Not homely.
Powerful? Yes.
Charismatic? Certainly.
Austere? Well …
His frown deepens.
Handsome, then?
Handsome?! He almost smiles. Why not? With that strong mouth, that straight nose, that no-nonsense set to her jaw …
He inspects her face, fondly.
Handsome? He ponders the word for a moment, perturbed. Isn’t handsome the kind of adjective you’d use to describe a brusque but peerlessly efficient ward matron of uncertain vintage? A dashing, Oxbridge undergraduate (male)? An admirably proportioned Arabian stallion?
She is perched on the stool of her dressing table with the reel of cotton clenched tightly in her fist and a needle held – delicately suspended – in the corner of her mouth.
‘If Jen hadn’t phoned,’ she reiterates, ‘I wouldn’t have had the slightest –’
‘I planned to tell you over dinner,’ Gene interjects, ‘it just didn’t seem fair to unload all this stuff on to you directly before Stan headed off on his exchange – you were anxious enough already …’
‘You made a deal with him,’ she snaps.
‘We forged a compromise,’ he corrects her.
‘I kept thinking how unusually quiet he was on the drive,’ she muses, irritated, ‘I just put it down to nerves.’
‘He was a little subdued,’ Gene confirms.
‘I could happily strangle him!’
She stares up at the light-fitment, her eyes filling with tears.
‘I told him you’d be disappointed,’ Gene tries to reassure her. ‘I said, “She won’t be angry, Stan, she’ll just be really disappointed – really disappointed.” He was devastated. He actually began to sob when I said that.’
Silence.
‘Fine.’
She blinks her own tears back. ‘So they smoked a huge quantity of pot, and then what?’
On ‘then’ (possibly pronounced more forcefully than she’d intended) she inadvertently spits the needle out on to the carpet.
‘Just one joint,’ Gene corrects her, ‘not “a huge amount”.’
‘Oh. Okay. Just one joint,’ she echoes, sarcastically, ‘just one, measly, insignificant little joint.’
She’s down on her knees now, searching for the needle.
‘I didn’t …’ Gene starts off.
‘I mean, good gracious!’ She rolls her eyes, facetiously. ‘What on earth am I getting myself so worked up about?!’
