The Yips. Nicola Barker

no play, eh?’ Ransom says, pityingly, indicating towards a neighbouring barstool with a benign and inclusive sweep of his arm. Gene frowns. In truth, he feels scant inclination to get involved in a fatuous discussion with the tipsy Yorkshireman (he’s on duty and has a certain number of chores to complete before knocking off at one) but then he detects an odd look – almost of desperation – in Ransom’s bloodshot eyes and slowly relents.

      Okay, Gene confides (backing into the stool and perching a single, taut buttock on it), so yes, if put on the spot he will admit that he does think Korean woman are quite beautiful. They have a certain measure of … of poise, a certain … a certain understated … uh … grace …

      Ransom scowls when Gene uses the word ‘grace’. The word ‘grace’ has no place – no place at all – in the kind of conversation he was angling for. Gene (as luck would have it) is also scowling now (and rapidly backtracking), saying that, on reflection, he hasn’t actually met that many Korean women in his life, apart from a couple who work in local restaurants. He says he therefore supposes that his assessment of the virtues of Korean women – as a unified class – is based entirely on a series of ill-considered – even stereotypical – ideas he has about Eastern women, and he is sure that this is a little stupid – even patronizing – of him because Korean women are doubtless very idiosyncratic, with their own distinct features and dreams and ideas and habits.

      ‘I’ll grant you that,’ Ransom concurs with a sage nod (informing Jen of his need for another drink with an imperiously raised finger). ‘They’ve got much fuller tits than the Japanese.’

      Gene draws back, dismayed, uncertain whether Ransom is joking or not. Ransom collapses forward on to the bar, shaking his head (apparently experiencing this same problem, first-hand). ‘Fuuuuck,’ he groans, ‘I honestly can’t believe I just said that.’

      Gene peers over at Jen (who has chosen to ignore Ransom’s request and is now cleaning out the coffee machine). He stands up and goes to fetch Ransom the drink himself (thereby symbolically re-emphasizing the wide emotional, intellectual and psychological distance between them by dint of the happy barrier that is the bar).

      As Ransom continues to groan (banging his forehead, gently, on the bar top), Gene goes on to say how he once watched a fascinating documentary about a Japanese girl who was kidnapped by the North Korean government – quite randomly – as she walked home from school one day. The girl was called Nagumi … no … no, Me-gumi, he corrects himself. Apparently (he continues) the North Koreans kidnapped many such young Japanese during this particular historical timeframe (the mid- to late 1970s) to study their behaviour so that their spies could pretend to be Japanese while undertaking terrorist attacks abroad. It transpires that the cultural differences between the North Koreans and the Japanese are very marked (Gene quickly warms to his theme), the way they wash their faces, for example, is very different (he impersonates the two styles: one a lazy splash, the other a more frenetic rub). The way they excuse themselves after sneezing. The way they say hello. The way they blow their noses or position their napkins. All tiny but vital cultural differences.

      ‘Michelle Wie,’ Stuart Ransom suddenly butts in (having taken a long draught of his new drink, straight from the bottle), ‘has massive feet. Whenever I watch her play I just keep staring at her feet. They’re friggin’ huge …’

      Gene frowns.

      ‘But I still find her pretty damn tasty all the same,’ Ransom avows, glancing down at his phone again and noticing, as he does so, that his hand is shaking. He grimaces, clenches his fingers into a tight fist and then shoves his hand, scowling furiously, into his trouser pocket.

      

      ‘Merde! This is useless! My hand just keeps shaking!’ her mother grumbles – in her strange, heavily accented English – awkwardly adjusting a toothbrush between her fingers.

      ‘Because you’re holding it all wrong,’ Valentine explains. ‘You’re holding it like you’d hold a pen. Why not try and hold it like you’d hold a … a …’ – she thinks hard for a second – ‘a hairbrush?’

      As she speaks, Valentine lifts a warm, bare foot from the bathroom linoleum (producing a tiny, glutinous, farting sound) and then dreamily inspects the steamy imprint that remains. She imagines her neat heel as the nose (or jaw) of a cartoon reindeer, and her toes as its modest, five-pronged crown of truncated horns.

      ‘I DON’T FUCKING REMEMBER!’ her mother suddenly yells, hurling the offending toothbrush into the toilet bowl.

      ‘Bloody hell, Mum!’ Valentine retrieves the toothbrush, runs it under the hot tap, squeezes on some more paste and then patiently proffers it back to her.

      ‘I CAN’T USE THAT FILTHY THING NOW!’ her mother bellows. ‘ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE?!’

      ‘Shhhh!’ Valentine whispers, pointing to the door. ‘It’s after twelve. You’ll wake Nessa.’

      ‘But how do I hold a hairbrush?’

      Her mother begins hunting around the bathroom for a hairbrush.

      ‘Like this …’ Valentine neatly demonstrates exactly how to hold the toothbrush.

      ‘But that’s a toothbrush and I want a hairbrush,’ her mother snaps. ‘I want to know how I’d hold a hairbrush.’

      Valentine opens the bathroom cabinet. ‘Here’s a comb,’ she says, removing an old nit comb from behind a medicated shampoo bottle.

      She passes it over.

      Her mother takes the comb. She holds it correctly, instinctively. She stares at it for a moment, blinks, and then: ‘Why the hell have you given me a fucking nit comb?’ she demands.

      ‘For some reason I always thought Michelle Wie was part-Hawaiian,’ Gene muses – half to himself – as he polishes a glass.

      ‘Nah-ah. You’re confusing her with Tiger Woods, mate.’ Ransom shrugs.

      ‘Michelle who?’ Jen suddenly interjects after a five-second hiatus (Jen is generally a bright, engaging conversationalist, but she’s just completing an exhausting, twelve-hour shift and also has a small – yet resilient – raft of ‘subsidiary’ issues to contend with, which Ransom can’t possibly have any inkling of, i.e. a) the tail-end of a painful dose of conjunctivitis – caught from her cat, Wookey, a magnificent, pedigree Maine Coon – combined with a prodigious pair of false eyelashes which are so long and audacious that they tickle both her cheeks, distractingly, every time she blinks, b) a ludicrously handsome, lusty and untrustworthy Irish boyfriend – by the name of Sinclair – who is currently living it up for a week on a lads-only break in Tangier, and c) the frightful responsibility of three E grade A-levels to re-sit over the summer. Jen longs to become a vet and is obsessed by Australian marsupials; their fluffy tails, their tiny hands, their huge, saucer-like eyes. Her favourite kind of marsupial is the sugar-glider. She even invented her own cocktail of the same name – a sickly combination of cold espresso, coconut milk and Malibu – which they sell at the bar simply to indulge her).

      ‘Michelle Wie,’ Gene says, politely glancing over at Ransom for confirmation, ‘is a young, female golfer who ruffled a few feathers a while back by insisting on competing professionally alongside the males –’

      ‘Why can’t women play golf?’ Ransom jovially interrupts him, with a leer.

      Pause.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Gene answers, cautiously, ‘why can’t women play golf?’

      ‘Because they’re good with an iron …’ Ransom’s voice cracks with ill-suppressed hilarity, ‘but they can’t drive! Boom Boom!’

      Gene smiles, thinly.

      ‘Sorry,’ Ransom apologizes, simulating embarrassment, ‘that one’s old as the friggin’ hills.’

      ‘Michelle Wee?!’ Jen snorts (totally ignoring Ransom’s attempted quip). ‘That’s brilliant!’

      ‘She’s a perfectly