Free Five Miles From Outer Hope by Nicola Barker Page B

preoccupied I resolve to ask him some leading questions.
    ‘I imagine you must’ve lived quite close to the sea in Cape Town. The city’s right on the coast, isn’t it?’ I begin with.
    ‘Must I?’ he answers haughtily. ‘ Is it?’
    He clearly doesn’t appreciate this particular line of questioning.
    ‘And your father’s a gynaecologist.’
    La Roux unbuckles his sandles, pulls off his socks, then laboriously rolls up his canvas trousers. His legs are phenomenally ginger-hairy against a contrasting skin-tone on the bright-white side of feta.
    His two feet are practically skeletal and in the dry morning heat the aroma from his absurdly long toes hinges on the fragile cusp of sweet Swiss-cheesy. He tests the pool’s temperature with the tip of his fingers, then clambers in.
    The water hits just under his knee. He shuffles around awhile, sending everything cloudy, then he pauses.
    ‘I remember Christmas mornings,’ he whispers suddenly. ‘My father, as always, up early and working at the large oak bureau in the sitting-room, waiting for me and my brother, the tree lights twinkling, the presents wrapped, paging and paging through a thousand graphic gynaecological illustrations of chronically diseased wombs and vaginas.’
    My face creases.
    ‘I’m starting to wonder,’ he continues, glancing over his shoulder for a second, ‘whether Black Jack might be sexually inverted .’
    I continue frowning. ‘Inverted? What does that mean?’
    ‘A lover of men.’
    ‘ Jack? Never.’
    ‘It’s just that he will keep staring.’
    I frown (I mean how to put this politely ?). ‘Perhaps it’s your balaclava. It does give you a slightly intimidating aura.’
    ‘No.’ La Roux shakes his scraggy head firmly. ‘It goes deeper. It’s something…’ he thinks for a moment, ‘…something untapped, something underneath, something… something goosy .’
    Goosy?
    ‘Jack? Untapped?’ I cackle. ‘That’s twisted .’
    La Roux swaps his stick into his other hand and then proceeds to wave it in Jack’s general direction. Jack freezes and turns briefly to peer behind him. Luckily Patch and Feely are just within sight carrying the nets to the tennis court.
    ‘It has subsequently become very difficult for me’, La Roux continues, ‘to even think about a woman’s sexual and reproductive organs without experiencing strong feelings of fear and revulsion. And believe it or not, in certain especially intimate situations, I find I lose all sensation in the pads of my fingers.’
    I frown. ‘That’s just tragic .’
    La Roux nods, sadly, plainly immune to my withering sarcasm. ‘When I asked him about it, the family doctor said the only way to get over this problem was to reacquaint myself with the vagina, but in what he called a gentle, open and unthreatening environment. By a process of calmly inspecting and slowly re-educating. Just glimpsing…’
    He gives me a sudden, furtive glance, to see how he’s doing (Who does he think he’s kidding ?). My face is a surly mask of violent antipathy. I think he gets the message.
    ‘Anyway,’ he chuckles wryly, ‘in many respects I see this strange affliction as the ultimate festive offering from my father.’
    ‘Give me a Chopper any day,’ I mutter.
    He points his stick accusingly. ‘You’re still such a baby .’
    I scowl back.
    ‘In defence of the vagina,’ I tell him, watching indulgently as he bends over and tries but fails to dismantle a limpet, ‘I’m pretty certain men’s genitals do their own fair share of rotting and festering.’
    La Roux’s eyes widen. ‘Are you trying to destroy my sexual impulses altogether ?’ he whispers hoarsely. I can’t tell if he’s joking. He straightens up, wipes his fingers on his trousers and shuffles around some more with a curiously unconvincing tragic air about him.
    After a brief lull he pauses. ‘When I was a kid,’ he begins dreamily, ‘I once went on holiday to a farm in the Orange Free State…’
    ‘A place