There are just two others; both younger and not particularly interesting. Patch. A girl. Twelve years old. Fat-cheeked. Literate. Needy. The only one among us not named after a Thurber pooch. Would you believe it? I mean how harsh. How excluding.
Then theres Feely (a slack, ill-bred Boston Bull Terrier), our smallest. Four. When he grows up he wants to be a bulimic (He thinks its a veterinarian who specialises in livestock. Hes so credulous). Hes into amateur naturalism. He is obsessed by the life story of a Japanese deer called Shiro Chan, a special doe with a strange white fringe whose story Barge came across by chance once in a poor-quality Japanese travel book. Its a tragic tale. Lovely deer: road traffic accident. Oh Lord. Dont even get me started.
Thats it. So Ill toss you a few crumbs, some details, to fill in, to plump out
We all have bad teeth (A direct consequence of:
(a) Non-fluoridated drinking water
(b) Brushing for six years (196874) with only our middle fingers
(c) Never eating solids as kids.
In his mid-thirties no doubt as a consequence of his own dreary digestive dramas Big became really interested in nutrition and spent the bulk of the seventies developing what turned out to be an unsuccessful forerunner to the Cambridge Diet. A shake for breakfast, one for lunch. You know the story. The upshot was I didnt chew until I was ten years old. I only ever sipped. I suffered chronic muscle wastage in my jowls. My teeth crumbled. Everyone thought I had cheekbones, but it was only deprivation.)
And we live on an island off the coast of South Devon. In fact weve lived on a whole host of islands, bigger than this one, if you must know, and grander (Islands were the atolls of the seventies, but inverted. Its a geographical joke. Just let it wash over). New Zealand. The Philippines. Jersey. The Scillies. That shithole where they made South Pacific, the 1950s Technicolor army-based bikini-drama (Remember me? I was the impeccably moral girl who somehow sustained a successful military career in hair rags and prescription hotpants. Ah yes. So lifelike).
Guess what? Joking aside, I have no interest in geography. Im a teenager. Its my foible. And anyway, if I stand on my tippy-toes and squint, I get to watch Margaret Thatcher crawling up Reagans arse all the way over in Missouri. Im a big girl. I see things coming.
In truth, the Devon thing is only very temporary: almost derelict Art Deco hotel up for sale. Needs renovating. Sounds romantic. Isnt. Bigs sorting out the grounds as a favour to the current owner, who spends most of her year sucking extraneous segments of tangerine from the dregs of her sangria in a sumptuous corner of Bilbao.
And its only part-island. When the tide goes out theres a nifty hourglass of sand attaching us, inexorably, to the remainder of the coastline. So during daylight, every six hours, the sightseers swarm over like fat ants across butter.
We live in squalor. We paint pottery for extra cash. It screws up your vision. It gives you the shakes. Its not at all cool.
But its the summer, dont forget, and not half-bad weather, either. 1981. I believe I mentioned that already. And soon Marcs going to be at the top of the charts, all dressed in black and irresistibly nasal. And Jack Henry will publish his wonderful book, then start campaigning like crazy for early parole (just you watch as he gets it). And Dolly Parton is up on the big screen, doing it for the girls in her office-based bio-pic, Nine-to-Five (oh Lordy, Lordy, thank you, Dolly!).
And there will be riots in Brixton, and Royal marriages and the space shuttle Columbia: flying and orbiting. And somehow theyll check-mate the Yorkshire Ripper, and baseball will strike, and air traffic controllers, and McEnroe will win the US Open, and Karpov will reign as World Chess Champion, and in May, Bob Marleys short life will be over. Cancer.
It is the Year of the Rooster: the strangest, darkest, screwed-up time of scratching and strutting and shitting and crowing. 1981.
Jesus Christ, my fucking ears are burning.
*At the time of writing I must debunk, for the sake of narrative accuracy he is embroiled in that most fascinating of occupations: court illustrator, somewhere noteworthy within the salubrious confines of the great city of Woolwich. But back then, it was matchstick men, matchstalk twats, L. S. Lowry, the abandoned houses. Twenty-one years old, poor sod, and dippy as a hungry swallow his unconscious patently embroiled in some kind of inexplicably acute trauma, his day-to-day personality far too slight and light and breezy for belief. What a fuck up.
Chapter 2
(I have pins in my ears. Flashforward, Dumbo. If my narration gets a little hot-diggedy its because I have pins in my ears. Seven in my right, one in my left. This is acupuncture. Im giving up smoking. And I dont even smoke yet.
Its very messed up. Youll find out later.)
Lets get this straight, for starters: I dont have beautiful eyes. If you dare even think it (and Im not kidding), then this whole damn business is over, buster. Ive been knocked hard and Im hurting, see? Because that asinine You Have Beautiful Eyes thing is exactly the kind of shudderingly clumsy gambit well-intentioned five-foot-seven morons really seem to enjoy trying out on a sixteen-year-old girl giant in mail-order shoes. So I dont want to hear it, okay?
And the truth is (more to the point), if you ever chanced to glance into the nappy of a five-month-old baby whod recently swallowed a gallon of mashed banana on a seven-hour boat trip, well, that would be a fair representation of the colour of my eyes. Or if you peered into Shakin Stevenss pituitary gland after a lengthy night out on the piss, that would be the colour of my eyes. I dont have beautiful eyes. I do have a beautiful chin. But unfortunately thats simply not the kind of thing people feel comfortable remarking upon in 1981.
Its a very dark time.
I didnt sleep much in May. Hormones. Id been spending the bleached-out early hours of every morning honing my masturbatory skills with only Peter Benchleys Jaws (come on! Not literally) and Barry Manilows Bermuda Triangle for company.
My clitoris, youll be pleased to know, is as well-defined as the rest of me. Its the approximate size of a Jersey Royal. But whenever I try and mash it (dont sweat, I know these particular potatoes are determined boilers, but flow with the analogy, for once, why dont you?), all I can think about is Mr Michael Heseltine MP eating an overripe peach on a missile silo somewhere deep in the South Downs or the general vicinity juice on his tie, shit on his shoes. Am I ringing a bell? Do you think this might mean something?
Im still young. I dont want to develop any sick sexual habits (to plough any permanent furrows) that I may have trouble casting off later. The way I see it, sex is rather like a hair parting; if it falls a certain way, after a while, it sticks. One day, I tell myself, Im absolutely certain Ill want to fuck Tony Hadley like all the other girls.
If, by sheer chance, youre interested in the layout, I have my portable mattress down on the ground floor in the old Peacock Lounge, next to the empty fountain with its rusty residue, the silver-tiled swoop of the cocktail bar and, best of all, glimmering high above me, the peacocked glass ceiling every feather rattling if the wind so much as sighs on it which means whenever I deign to close my eyes its like that great, big barman in the sky is mixing me a Manhattan.
Cocks aside, in those long, listless, liquid-ceilinged early hours I often find myself thinking about the big issues: Can my hair sustain a wedge? Is the Findus Crispy Pancake truly a revelation in modern cuisine? Am I Hooked on Classics? Will Poodle see the folly of her ways and extricate herself from her disastrous affair with that repulsively lascivious travel agent whose skin resembles an ill-used leather hold-all? Is exploding candy truly a part of Gods scheme?
Big has this great story about God which hell tell you at the drop of a stitch if youre stupid enough to consider asking. It involves six roadkills and it explains a lot. Wanna hear it?
Okay. Its circa 1957, and Big is driving a group of student buddies on a wild coast-to-coast excursion through some barely roaded, shit-slicked, no-horse parts of America. Christ knows where. He is driving this I can help you with, its the question Barge always asks whenever Big cranks this story up some old-fashioned type of American Cadillac, an ancient, dusty, sludgy green-coloured cheap rental with no air-con or heating.
It is night time. Big is tired. He is not, however, under the malign sway of any kind of boozy or druggy concoction (Patch asks this. Shes interested in narcotics. When she grows up she expects to be a pharmacist. Ironically, history has much greater things in store for her; after a bumpy start she ends up being part of the team who revolutionize thermal clothing you know, that whole pitiful nineties inner-wear becomes outer-wear farrago?)
Bear in mind, this is a man with half a stomach, remember? A dwarf. He can barely reach the pedals without standing upright. Its not half so romantic as youre thinking, trust me.
Anyway, its late. Bigs pals a group of shallow horticultural students with hayseed in their teeth and manure on their breath (this is a point of interest to Poodle, who can already identify most of Bigs associates by their vasectomy scars) are dozing in the front and in the back. On the radio (this is my moment) are a selection of classy orchestral standards arranged by Glen Miller or Robert Farnon or somebody.
Well, Big has not been driving over-long when he sees something quick and dinky suddenly skipping in front of him. He blinks. There on the road stands a tiny fieldmouse. He brakes, quickly, but still he hears the inevitable ka-ting and then feels the front left-hand wheel hiccup slightly. Oh dear.
Big drives on. Twenty minutes later, he turns a sharp corner only to see a jackrabbit standing in his headlights like some kind of out-of-work Disney character: up on its back legs, its little paws flailing. He cant even brake. Phut! Dent in the bumper the size of a turnip. Fur on the mudguard. The rabbit, I fear, is plainly no longer.
He drives on Okay, Ill cut this short as Im presuming youre a quick learner Next up, a racoon. Hes lucky this time just clips it. It squeals like a banshee then jumps up and scarpers.