The Yips. Nicola Barker
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…’ – he twitches his nose but doesn’t sneeze this time – ‘it certainly wasn’t …’ – now he sneezes – ‘the be-all and end-all for me back then. Not like it is today. It was definitely more of a means to an end than anything else. Surfing was my true passion. I was deadly serious about it – spent the best part of ’90, ’91 bumming my way around the planet, catching waves in all the world’s top, surfing hotspots: Morocco, Australia, the Indian Ocean … In fact I was just starting to garner some serious recognition on the amateur circuit when I fractured this’ – Ransom cuffs his hip, irritably – ‘in a motorcycle accident: Kommertjie, South Africa. February 5th, 1992.’ He shakes his head, forlornly. ‘I’ll never forget that date, long as I live. A yellow Kawasaki 200cc scrambler. Borrowed it off a mate. No mudguards, no mufflers. Pair of cut-off jeans, no shoes, no gloves. Popped a wheelie – just showing off to some beach babe – then hit a fuckin’ pothole and flipped the damn thing. I’m still carrying the red dirt from that road under the skin of both elbows …’
Ransom shoves up the sleeves of the military jacket (with some effort).
‘So your surfing career was over?’ Stan asks, neglecting to acknowledge the (fairly impressive) scars Ransom has just revealed.
‘Nah-ah. The injury wasn’t serious enough to ground me for good. I almost wish it had been, with hindsight. Life just got in the way there for a while …’ Ransom delivers Stan a warning look. ‘It has a nasty, fuckin’ habit of doing that.’
Stan – perhaps prompted into action by Ransom’s tone of foreboding (and an equally powerful urge not to acknowledge it) – silently recommences uncovering the vehicle.
‘I never quit, not officially,’ Ransom continues, ‘in fact I don’t think I would’ve been mentally capable of quitting at that stage. Surfing was my life. My dream. I just played a few holes in the Cape while I was on the mend, came second in an amateur event there, flew to Jamaica – on a whim – with the prize money, hung out for a while, got stoned, got laid, got dumped, got ripped off, got into a bit of financial strife, then hustled on a couple of courses to raise my fare home. Got into more strife.’ He rolls his eyes, exasperated. ‘Don’t even ask …’ (Stan wasn’t intending to), ‘and eventually got deported.’ He shrugs. ‘Then, when I finally arrived back home, the whole thing kinda steamrollered. Two years later, I’m number one on the British amateur circuit. Turned pro in ’93 and entered the Big Time, wholescale. Everyone said it was too early, but what the fuck? It was wild. It was a blast! I didn’t really have the first, bloody clue what’d hit me.’
By the time Ransom’s potted biography has concluded, the tarp has been removed and an old, military Hummer with immaculately maintained camouflage paintwork has been revealed in all its glory. They stand and silently appraise the vehicle together. Ransom kicks a wheel.
‘She’s a beaut’.’
‘Yeah.’ Stan nods. ‘She was my dad’s, originally. He ran a war games shop in the centre of town. Used it for publicity. But the business went bust last year, so he flogged it to Gene for a couple of hundred quid before his creditors could get a hold of it. Gene’d helped him to do it up and stuff. Mum hates having it stuck out here. She says there’s no room to barbecue, but we never barbecued anyway …’
Ransom tries the door handle but the Hummer is locked.
‘I had this dinky, little military jeep in the early nineties,’ he muses. ‘Haven’t thought about it in years. It was nuts. Looked like something out of Mad Max. I totalled it about five times but it just kept on going. People would stand in the street, their mouths hanging open, pointing at it and laughing. It was completely fuckin’ wrecked. God, I loved that vehicle … I remember I was driving it around Paris with Karma this one time …’
‘Karma?’ Stan’s head jerks around. ‘Not Karma Dean?’
‘Huh?’
Ransom’s still thinking about his old jeep.
‘Did you check out the huge poster in my room?’ Stan demands, excited.
‘Poster?’
‘In my room. The massive poster. The massive Karma Dean poster.’
‘A Karma Dean poster? Uh … no.’ Ransom slowly shakes his head (plainly irritated by the teen’s sudden, high levels of engagement).
‘Oh.’
Stan looks disappointed.
‘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