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‘The Chinese Horoscope!’ (Ransom’s easily distracted.)
‘The current export price of British beef,’ Gene casually raises him.
‘Which is the luckier number’ – Ransom plucks at his unshaven chin with comedic thoughtfulness – ‘three or seven?’
‘Stones versus Beatles!’ Gene’s starting to sweat a little.
‘Leeches!’ Ransom whoops (slamming down his beer bottle – for extra emphasis – then cursing as it foams up, over and on to the bar top).
Leeches?
‘But I love leeches!’ Jen squeals, baby-clapping delightedly. ‘Let’s talk about leeches! Let’s! Let’s! Oh, do let’s!’
Ransom recoils slightly at the unexpected violence of Jen’s reaction.
‘Jen’s into nature,’ Gene explains (with an avuncular smile), ‘she’s hoping to become a vet when she eventually grows up.’
Jen shoots Gene a faux-filthy/faux-flirty look.
‘Okay …’ Ransom tosses a quick peanut into his mouth and then launches, vaingloriously, into the requisite anecdote.
‘So I was playing this shonky tournament in Japan once,’ he starts off, ‘and I sliced a shot on the fourth which landed just to the right of the green in this really tricky area of rough –’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Jen interrupts, holding up her hand, exasperated. ‘Please, please, please tell me we’re not back to talking about sodding golf again?!’
‘Did you hear that?’ Valentine asks, cocking her head and listening intently.
‘What?’ Her mother stops brushing. She’s been brushing so diligently that her gums are bleeding and the white foam in her mouth has turned pink.
‘A squeak … this tiny squeak and then a sharp kind of … of scratching sound.’
Her mother also listens. A cat pads into the bathroom, sits down and commences licking its paws. There are now three cats in the room: one on the windowsill, one in the bath (where it’s just squatting to defecate over the plug-hole) and one sitting by the door.
‘This house is full of stinking cats,’ her mother grumbles. ‘How can we have rats in a house full of stinking cats?’
Valentine doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes. She places a finger to her lips.
Her mother ignores her. ‘Bobby’s sur le point de chier énormément,’ she announces.
‘Huh?’
Valentine is still listening out, intently, for another squeak.
‘Bobby. The stinking cat. He’s shitting on the plug.’
Valentine’s eyes fly open. She turns. She does a quick double-take.
‘No! Bobby!’ she yells. ‘STOP!’
* * *
‘Football’s bad enough,’ Jen grumbles, attacking the coffee machine with a renewed ferocity, ‘but golf? Urgh! You just can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere – like a contagious disease.’
‘“A good walk, spoiled,” I believe the saying goes.’
As he speaks, Gene reaches under the counter and withdraws a small, black notepad (with a broken, red Bic shoved into its metal binder). He opens the book, removes the pen, jots down a quick reminder about the squeaking barstool, then turns to the back page and in large, block letters writes: IT’S STUART RANSOM – THE FAMOUS PRO GOLFER, STUPID!
He then casually leans back and proffers Jen the pad.
‘In fact this really lovely friend of mine called Candy Rose, who I first met at jazz/tap classes when I was nine …’ Jen pauses, ruminatively, pointedly ignoring the pad. ‘Although – strictly speaking – we already knew each other, by sight, from nursery school …’
Ransom yawns and glances down at his phone.
‘Anyhow,’ Jen blithely continues, ‘Candy works for this animal refuge near Wandon End, and they were desperate to expand their workspace into some adjacent farmland. The farmer seemed perfectly happy to rent it out to them, but for some strange reason the council kept raising all these petty objections to their planning application. Then the next thing we know, this huge, twenty-five-acre plot –’
‘The yamabiru.’ Ransom suddenly turns, quite deliberately, and addresses himself directly to Gene. ‘The Japanese land leech. The mountains are their natural habitat, but over recent years they’ve taken to hitching a ride down on to the flatlands with packs of roaming boar and deer. They’ve become a real pest in the towns where they enjoy slithering into people’s socks and quietly ingesting a quick takeaway meal …’
‘Jesus!’ Gene is revolted. ‘How big?’
‘Small. Around half an inch to begin with, but they can swell to almost ten times that size. I had one gnawing away at my ankle but I didn’t have a clue about it till I felt this nasty twinge by the fourth and yanked off my shoe. At first I thought it was just a thorn or a thistle, but then I realized my sock was totally soaked …’ he pauses, dramatically, ‘… saturated with my own blood.’
‘Wow!’ Jen is clearly impressed. ‘A land leech? That’s wild!’
‘A yamabiru.’ Ransom nods. ‘I swear I nearly shat myself.’
‘Spell that out for me …’ Jen snatches the pad from Gene. ‘I’m gonna look it up on the internet.’
‘Did it hurt?’ Gene wonders.
‘Nah. It was more the shock of it than anything. I mean the sheer volume of …’
‘Wow!’ Jen repeats. ‘So what did you do with it? Did you kill it? Did you stamp on it? SPLAT!’
Jen stamps her foot, violently. ‘Did it explode like a water-bomb? I bet you did. I bet you killed it.’
‘Damn, fuckin’ right I would’ve!’ Ransom exclaims, indignant. ‘But I never got the chance. The little swine’d drunk its fill and scarpered.’
‘So how …?’ Gene looks mystified.
‘The course quack. He identified the wound. Said it was a pretty common problem on golf courses in those parts.’
‘Yik!’ Jen is mesmerized. She is still holding the pad.
‘Did you quit the match?’ Gene wonders.
‘Quit?’ Ransom looks astounded. ‘Whadd’ya take me for?! I poured a small bottle of iced water over my head, smoked a quick fag, downed a quart of Scotch and finished in a perfectly respectable five over par.’
A short silence follows. Ransom takes a long swig of his beer.
‘Although the leeches were the least of my problems in Japan.’ He hiccups. ‘Oops.’ He places his hand over his mouth. ‘It turns out the tournament had been arranged by the Yakuza …’
‘The Japanese mafia?’ Gene’s eyes widen.
‘Yep. They were extorting cash from local businessmen by forcing them to take part and then charging them huge entry fees. I kept wondering at the time why all the course officials seemed so jittery …’
‘Bloody golf !’ Jen exclaims, slapping the pad down, forcefully. ‘Even the word is ridiculous – like a cat vomiting up a giant hair-ball: GOLLUFF! ’ she huskily intones, rolling her eyes while making an alarming retching motion with her throat. Both men turn to stare at her, alarmed. ‘Just name me any game,’ Jen challenges them, ‘I mean any sport on the planet more selfish than golf is.’
Silence.
‘Formula One,’ Gene finally responds.
‘Shooting,’ Ransom suggests, cocking and aiming an imaginary gun at her.
‘Yeah …’ Jen’s plainly not convinced. ‘But could you really call that a sport, as such?’
‘KA-BOOM!’
Ransom fires. It’s a clean shot.
‘They have an Olympic team,’ Gene says, snatching up the pad again, opening it and proffering it to her.
‘It’s not only golf, though.’ Jen waves the pad away. ‘I can’t stand tennis, either. I hate tennis. To my way of thinking it’s just a game invented by idiots, for idiots. Simple as.’
Before Jen can further substantiate this hypothesis, Gene has grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face the back wall of the bar. ‘What’s got into you tonight?’ he hisses.
Jen gazes up at him, wide-eyed. ‘I hate tennis, Gene.’ She shrugs (raising both hands, limp-wristedly, like a world-weary Jewish dowager). ‘Is that suddenly such a crime?’
Gene studies her face for a second, grimaces, releases her arm, then slaps the black notebook shut and tosses it – defeated – back under the counter.
Ransom downs the remainder of his beer in a single gulp, then burps, majestically, from the other side of the bar. Jen snorts, ribaldly. Gene shoots her a warning look.
Her mother swallows the paste and then gently belches.
‘You really shouldn’t swallow it,’ Valentine mutters. She’s just flushed the cat mess down the toilet and is now washing her hands, fastidiously, under the hot tap.
‘I’ve always swallowed it,’ her mother maintains.
‘Well, you taught me not to swallow it.’ Valentine turns the tap off.
Her mother inspects her teeth, critically, in the bathroom mirror.
‘You’re not meant to swallow it,’ Valentine persists, ‘you’re meant to spit it out.’
‘Really? Il dit ça sur le tube?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Does it say that on the tube?’
Valentine shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Have a look.’
Her mother grabs the tube and proffers it to Valentine. Valentine shakes the water off her hands, takes the tube and inspects it.
‘Does it say you shouldn’t swallow?’
Her mother peers at the tube over Valentine’s shoulder.
‘No.’ Valentine frowns. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily …’
Her mother recommences brushing again. Valentine places the tube back into the tooth mug. She watches her mother for a while and then: ‘I think you’ve probably been brushing for long enough now,’ she says.
‘Really?’ Her mother stops brushing. ‘How long is “enough”?’
Valentine shrugs. ‘Two minutes?’
‘And how long have I …?’
‘About four.’
Her mother stares at her, blankly.
‘Four minutes. One, two, three, four …’
Valentine slowly counts the digits out on to her fingers. ‘So you’ve basically been brushing for almost double the amount of time you need to.’
Valentine illustrates this point, visually, by dividing the four fingers into two.
Her mother stares at Valentine’s fingers, intrigued. ‘If two twos are double,’ she wonders, ‘then what about three threes? Are three threes double?’
‘Uh … no.’ Valentine shakes her head. ‘Three times three is nine. That’s triple. Two times three is double.’
‘Two threes are six,’ her mother says.
‘Exactly.’ Valentine nods, encouragingly. ‘Two times three is six. Well done.’
She holds up six fingers and divides them in half.
‘Okay’ – her mother is now concentrating extremely hard – ‘and twice times fifty-fivety?’
‘Two times fifty-five is one hundred and ten.’ Valentine nods again. ‘Well done. That’s double, too.’
‘And twice times –’
‘You generally say two times,’ Valentine interrupts, ‘and it’s always double. Two of anything is always double. That’s the rule.’
She turns to dry her hands on a towel.
