In the Approaches

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well did you change the subject?’

‘Uh …’ Alys ponders this for a moment. ‘Sometimes. Yes.’

I roll my eyes and start to walk over towards the window, but am prevented from doing so by the tangled phone cord. I grimace and start the laborious task of unwinding it.

‘Well, for what it’s worth, he was still incredibly rude about Rogue’s weight,’ I mutter (smarting at the mere memory), ‘unforgivably rude.’

‘Rogue is horrendously overweight, Carla,’ Alys sighs, ‘Rolfie too, for that matter. Your father systematically overfeeds them. It’s awful – strange – cruel. You’re always moaning on about it yourself …’

She has me there, admittedly.

‘In Shimmy’s defence,’ she blithely continues, ‘it’s probably the expression of some profound, deep-seated emotional conflict or trauma, possibly relating to the persecution of the Jews.’

‘He is fat,’ I murmur, slightly shame-faced now, ‘but to be so … so forthright about it, and so mean, so horribly judgemental—’

‘Mr Huff has been resident in Pett Level for almost six weeks now,’ Alys interrupts, ‘and in that entire time has hardly breathed so much as a word to you, Carla. Perhaps you might be feeling a little … I don’t know … sidelined? Ignored? Piqued?’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ I exclaim, horrified. ‘I never had any intention of speaking to the man! I’ve been actively avoiding him. Why else did I hire Mrs Barrow to clean the cottage? To act as a go-between? I was actually glad he didn’t approach me – relieved.’

‘Sorry …’ Alys interjects, ‘there’s interference on the line.’

‘I said I was glad he didn’t approach me,’ I repeat, louder, briefly desisting from my frenzied untangling.

‘Right. Okay. So that’s why you approached him this afternoon …’ she wryly observes.

‘I didn’t!’ I squeak. ‘He’s staying in the cottage, my cottage, and by all accounts he’s gradually dismantling it, piece by piece. His wife ran over Mame’s cat, for heaven’s sake! What other option did I have? He lied about his true identity on the lease. They signed in under Ashe …’

‘Yes, yes. And of course you just naturally presumed …?’ I can hear the infuriating smile in Alys’s voice, and behind it (like the alternating layers of blue-grey wash in the lowering sky of a fine watercolour painting) a parrot muttering, ‘Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!’ culminating with a deafening, ‘WAH!’

‘Presumed what?’ I demand, wincing (although I know exactly what she’s about to say).

‘That he wanted to talk to you. That he’s obsessed by you – stalking you. That you would naturally be the “crucial witness”. The main focus. The hidden key to it all! You’ve been actively looking forward to rejecting his advances, but he hasn’t actually made any. He’s been the perfect gentleman! Face it, Carla, you’re more obsessed than he is!’

‘I didn’t presume anything …’ I grumble, wounded. Once again – as a distraction – I start untangling the line. ‘Although it was perfectly reasonable to assume that after he’d approached pretty much everyone even remotely connected to the Cleary visit … I mean he tracked down the milkman, Alys! Old Billy Peck who was always deaf as a post. He tracked him down. And the woman who ran the mobile library – I don’t even remember her name!’

‘Meredith Brown. So perhaps he got what he needed from other sources?’ Alys suggests brightly.

‘Yes. Yes. Maybe he did.’ I sullenly play along.

‘I mean it’s not anything too in-depth that he’s after, just a series of captions for this little book of photographs. By Kimberly Couzens. That Canadian woman. The photographer. You know – the one who was with Mr Cleary when …’

‘Well hopefully he’s satisfied with what he’s got,’ I concur, moving a couple of feet closer to the window (as a consequence of my untangling), ‘and now he’ll clear off and leave us all in peace.’

‘Hopefully,’ she echoes (perhaps not entirely convinced).

‘Is it raining in Hove?’ I wonder.

‘It was earlier. Fairlight?’

‘Tipping it down.’

I gaze out at the rain.

‘Are you thinking of heading back?’ Alys wonders, after a brief silence.

‘Sorry?’

‘To the cottage. To sort it all out.’

‘No!’ I snort, then, ‘Yes. I am, actually. But he’ll probably be home again by now.’

‘You should go anyway, and if he is there, apologize. Make it heartfelt. It was an awful thing to do, Carla. He’ll think you’re completely unbalanced!’

I grimace.

‘And after I told him – at such unbearable length – about what a dear little lamb you are!’ she murmurs, softening.

I promptly baaaa (it’s automatic, semi-ironic, perfectly sincere). I have always – always – been Alys’s dear, little lamb.

‘Exactly!’ She chuckles. ‘But don’t just hang around in Fairlight pointlessly over-analysing everything like you normally do. Each second counts. Your honour is at stake here – and that of the entire community, by default,’ she adds.

Great. No pressure then. I solemnly inspect the rivulets of water trickling drably – incessantly, wetly – down the windowpane. Of course she is right. Alys invariably is. I will go. I was angry. I was wrong. I have behaved like a maniac. I am at a moral disadvantage. It simply won’t do.

I draw a deep breath and steel myself, preparing to say my goodbyes, but am momentarily distracted by an unexpected rumble – very low, like a long, metal snake of conjoined supermarket trolleys being pushed, some distance away, across a wide expanse of tarmac. Oh God, I recognize that sound! My skin instantly starts to prickle its automatic response (Quick! Run, Carla, run!). Seconds later (and I haven’t even shifted by so much as a centimetre) – pouf! – my garden shed evaporates.

6

Teobaldo

Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! WAH!

WAH!

‘Sun’ near ‘cage’! Yay! ‘Sun’ near ‘cage’! Look at ‘sun’! Joy! Blink! Look at ‘sun’! Near ‘cage’. Happy. Happy ‘sun’. Rock, rock, rock. Happy!

Hup! Whassat? Eh? Ooogh! Ooogh! Oooooogh …! Urgh! Big poo! Aaah. Aaaah! Good.

Where’d it go?

Eh?

Twizzle head.

Eh?

Where’d poo go?

Ah!

Look! Look!

‘Seed bowl’!

Yay!

Baldo crap in ‘seed bowl’! Baldo crap in ‘seed bowl’!

Yay!

‘Sun’ near ‘cage’. Happy! Happy ‘sun’! Crap all done. Aaaah! Happy moment. Happy moment. Crap done. In bowl.

Now what?

Wanna fly! Wanna fly! Wanna fly!

Nest. Where’s nest? Why no nest? Wanna nest. Baldo find ‘twig’. Baldo find ‘straw’. Baldo find soft, soft, soft … Wanna fly! No. No. No fly. No nest. Sad. Sad moment. Sad Baldo.

Whassat?!

Itch! Urgh! Itch! Itch! ITCH!!! Gotta … gotta … Oooh! Yeah. Yeah …

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Feather, feather, feather! Look! Soft feather down like grey snow! Good! Good for nest. Oh. No. No nest.

Poor Baldo.

Hmmn.

‘Room’.

‘Cage’. ‘Chair’. ‘Lamp’. ‘Dresser’. ‘Ceiling’. No sky! ‘Ceiling’. No sky! Dead sky. Gone sky. Can’t … can’t …! No sky!

Wanna fly.

Sad moment.

Whassat? ‘Sun’! Baldo, look! See ‘sun’!

Getting closer!

Joy!

Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!

Hmmn.

Egg.

Why no egg?

Why no nest?

Bounce! Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!

Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Wah! Wah! WAH!

Oh … Uh-oh … Here she comes, here she comes. Jailer! Bitch! Here she comes! Bow, deep bow. Respectful. Deep bow. Baldo, Baldo, Baldo, Baldo …

Away she goes again! Gone. Gone! Lonely Baldo. Ruffle feathers. Where’s the …?

‘Mirror’! Ring the ‘bell’! Look in ‘mirror’!

WAH!

Look! Look! Whosat? Whosat? Spirit parrot! Whosat? Eye! Evil! Beak! Sharp! Dead parrot! Ghost parrot! Whosat?

WAH!

Ruuuun!

Wanna fly! Wanna fly! Wanna fly!

Escape!

Huh?

Whassat?! Roar! Waterfall! Thunder! It’s the screaming monster! YAAARGH! She’s back! Bitch is back! She’s got the metal monster! Horrible! Horrible! Waterfall! Storm! Thunder! Death! Terrible roar! Angry monster! Hungry monster! Under ‘chair’! Under ‘little table’! Bitch is riding the metal monster! Under ‘cage’! … WAH!

Wanna fly! Wanna fly! Wanna fly!

Can’t! Can’t!

Rock, rock, rock, rock. Fear! Fear! Fear!

Where?

Where?!

Run down the ‘perch’! Jump into the ‘bowl’! Throw out the food. Sod off! Go! Scram! Take that! Take that! Hah! WAH!

Yay!

Sudden quiet! Brave Baldo! Clever Baldo! Dead monster!

Preen!

‘Teobaldo! **** **! *** Teobaldo! ******!’

[‘Teobaldo! Stop it! Bad Teobaldo! Enough!’]

Yes! That’s me! Teobaldo! That’s me! Happy! Happy! Dead monster! Hah! Here she comes.

Urgh. Finger. Urgh! Kill the finger! Eat the finger! Urgh! Come on! Head tip. Watch finger! Waggle finger!

Come on! Come on!

Bitch.

WAH!

‘Teobaldo! ***** ****** ** **** ****! ***** ***! *** ***! **** ******** ** **********!’

[‘Teobaldo! You’ve messed in your food! Silly boy! Bad boy! Stop throwing it everywhere!’]

Baldo a girl. La la! Baldo a girl. La la! Baldo a girl, you bitch jailer fool.

Where’s Baldo’s egg? Eh? Bitch?

Where’s Baldo’s mate? Eh?

Where’s Baldo’s nest?

Just. Let. Baldo. Go!

Wanna fly! Wanna fly! Wanna fly!

Rock, rock, rock, rock.

No fly.

‘Cage’.

‘Cage’.

What Baldo do so bad? Eh?

‘Ceiling’. ‘Cage’. Dead wings. Can’t … Can’t … Trapped. Panic in bones. Dead wings.

Itch! Itch! Ruffle feathers. Scratch!

Breuuugh!

That’s better!

Breuuugh!

That’s better!

Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!

Uh-oh! Here she comes again!

‘**** **** Teobaldo! **** ********** ********! ***** ***** **** *** *****, eh?

‘Pretty boy! ***** ***** **** *** *****? Eh? ** ** *** ******? Eh? **** *** **** *** ******? **** ** ****** * **** ** *** *** ****** ** *** ******* ** ******** **** **** ** ** *** *****. Eh? Pretty boy!’

[‘Stop that, Teobaldo! Stop scratching yourself! What’s wrong with you today, eh?

‘Pretty boy! What’s wrong with you today? Eh? Is it the hoover? Eh? Don’t you like the hoover? Well I’m afraid I have to use the hoover if you persist in throwing your food on to the floor. Eh? Pretty boy!’]

Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!

Pretty boy! Pretty boy! Pretty boy!

But Baldo a girl!

La!

Baldo a girl!

Ta-dah!

Pretty boy!

Preen!

Eh? Eh?! Where ‘sun’ go?

Huh?

Where ‘sun’?

Where’d it go?

WAH!

7

Mr Franklin D. Huff

I don’t know why I imagined I’d make it all the way around to Hastings before the tide came in. It was an ambitious scheme, at best – not so much even a scheme as a blithe notion, a vague ‘urge’, a complete spur-of-the-moment thing – and I was (quite frankly) unsuitably shod. It’s a challenging walk, much of it demanding – with the tide coming in, out of sheer necessity – a measure of energetic clambering and even leaping from large rock to large rock.

An ambitious scheme, as I’ve said. A foolish scheme. And then, when I finally made it back (forty-eight hours later! Barely still in possession of life and limb) … On my eventual return … The conquering hero (ha, ha, ha) …

Urgh! How else can I describe the vileness I encountered? Just … just … just plain … urgh!

Yes. Yes. So it was a rather silly plan, in retrospect. Irresponsible. I am currently in possession of the Tide Tables for Dungeness, Rye Bay and Hastings (courtesy of our Ms Hahn, no less; part of the cottage’s Welcome Pack). Pett Level doesn’t actually have its own Table (too small, insignificant) – it falls ‘in the approaches’ of Rye Bay and Hastings, but even so, it still doesn’t demand much basic common sense to puzzle the tides out. I didn’t tarry to make this calculation, though, just grabbed my keys and my wallet (no. Not the keys, just the wallet) and blithely set off. It was a silly scheme. It would be fair to say that I sincerely regret it, now. I do. I really do. I regret the leaving, but gracious me! The return! When I finally dragged my way back home (no bus fare! That endless trudge from Hastings over hard road and soggy field!) … On my eventual …

I see it clear as day in my mind’s eye: that lone dustbin perched – somewhat improbably – atop the Look Out (visible from quite some distance off). A warning shot across my bows. An omen. But I just gazed at it, quite innocently, idly pondering the logistics of it all. How on earth did that …? I mean it’s a difficult enough scramble up there without …

I was just way too frazzled to register that this was my bin, that this was my issue …

Perhaps I was actually heading for the New Beach Club (that previous afternoon but one) although the NBC is actually in the opposite direction to Hastings, so possibly not. Or, better still, to The Smuggler (which is en route), for a stiff drink or three. I don’t precisely recall. Although I was dangerously short of cash. Yes. Only had enough for a Schweppes bitter lemon or a Coke. Perhaps I was just …

What was I doing?

Letting off steam?

Getting some much-needed air?

Thinking things through on the hoof?

Walking it out?

All of the above?

I don’t really know why I left (it’s honestly just a blur now – a pointless irrelevance), but then to return to … I mean to come back to the cottage (my base, my home, my … my lair), stagger into the bedroom – exhausted, depleted – and find … Urgh!

The bin was definitely a warning. Then the porch light wouldn’t work. The bulb was missing. Then …

Urgh. Urgh. Urgh!

It now occurs to me that perhaps I hadn’t taken the news of Kimberly’s passing quite so well as I’d initially thought. How I loathe that word: ‘passing’! It smacks of the clairvoyant: the velvet curtain, the spotlight, the odour of a cheap cigar. It’s a verb that tiptoes gingerly around the ineffable absolutes of mortality: the stiffness, the coldness, the imminent putrescence. The ineluctable gone-ness.

‘Passing’. It’s an end without an end – an end without a beginning, even. A cowardly avoidance.

But how else to … to get through all those unbearable sentences – those endless, stewing thoughts – each one punctuated by the thudding, hammer-blow of ‘dead’? That savage, nail-in-the-coffin word. I used it – I had used it – countless times in the first short while after hearing the news (that garbled phone message), but its regular use – all that relentless thud-thud-thudding – had begun to bump and bruise my very core. The body was inside the coffin! Bang, bang, bang! The lid was sealed! Bang, bang, bang! But still the word kept on providing new nails, and of course they needed to be applied (demanded it), to be neatly and dispassionately embedded. But where? The wall? The door? My heart? My head? My soul? No! No, I had to get rid of that word. I had to eliminate it. It had suddenly become too real, too meaningful. How even to approach it now without … without feeling the urge to emit a terrible, wolf-like howl? Without jabbering? Without flailing around? Falling to my knees and tearing at my clothes? Without an all-out collapse, in other words? Surely it’s better to just … just use something else, something less definitive, something that evades … that compresses … that curtails the connected emotion. A band-aid word. Yes. A slightly vague, pointless, polite, peripheral word. To cleverly create a separate universe in language and then quietly retreat into it, to hide, like a cringing ninny, from … from …

From Kimberly’s passing?

Yes.

Kimberly has passed … Oh, look! There she goes! Hear the whistle? Kimberly! She’s a heavy-goods train thundering through the station of life (no timetabled stop) and then into the glorious bleakness – the billowing clouds of dry ice – beyond. Only the truly adventurous – the demented hobo, the illegal, the felon – would consider running after her and hitching a ride. Those trains are heavily guarded, I’ve heard. No. Better just wait a little longer on the welcoming, well-lit platform and flick through the local paper (great article about piles. Wonderful small ads. Nothing really amounting to ‘news’, as such) then head over to the kiosk for a hot cup of coffee (avoid the tea. The tea’s dreadful, like warm iron filings. It’s been stewing for days inside a giant rusty urn).

Just stand back (always respectful, mind) and let that old, heavy-goods train rumble on through …

Rumble.

Rrrrrrumble?

Gracious me! A sudden outbreak of goose-bumps on my forearm. How odd!

Uh …

No.

No. Let’s not talk of death, eh? Death sticks between the teeth like a pesky piece of sweetcorn husk. Sweetcorn’s way too ambitious a vegetable for a man in my state. I need mashed potato softened with milk. Or mushy peas. Or a lightly seasoned dollop of glowing swede, shining with butter. Or porridge. I need porridge! I need custard! A soft-boiled egg!

I’m too delicate!

Coddle me!

Uh …

No.

It wasn’t a great scheme, in other words. I wasn’t genned up on the Tide Times. I just headed out – flew out.

Perhaps I was more upset than I thought. Everything felt very sharp – the light, the sound of the gulls, the waves – the damn Channel so unapologetic, so vital, so unbearably bloody there; the texture of the pebbles on the beach, the individual grains of sand … Everything sharp. Everything cruel. And then … What happened?

I’m struggling to … uh …

Ten paces after I saw Miss Hahn and her ridiculous dog – that awful, fat dog; a barely perambulating canine offence, a cruel joke – I suddenly stopped short and thought, God. Did I actually just say that? Did I actually just speak those words from here … up here … from this mouth? The exchange – was there an exchange, though? – fell across the beach in front of me like a shadow in bright sun. I moved, it moved. Good heavens! Did I actually just …? No. Surely not! So I promptly strode on. Had to get through it. Simple as that. Fight or flight. Fight and flight. Pure instinct. Couldn’t think. Didn’t want to. Continued walking.

It’s possible the plan hadn’t even been fully hatched at that stage – the epic hike. It was barely in incubation. I was just … still can’t quite remember what I … I think it was just … just getting away from that word. The relentless hammer-blow of that word.

‘Good afternoon, Ms Hahn! The renovations? Uh … not now, dear. I’m … uh … My wife just died. We weren’t really married … well we were, but in title alone. We lived on separate continents. But I still reserve the right to be intensely pissed off – alternately numbed, bewildered, shattered, even – by the news. All right, Miss Hahn? Okay with that, are we? Is that acceptable to you, Miss Hahn? It is? It is? Good! Great! Toodle-oo!’

I just … I just … I wanted to blurt it out! Yes! I wanted to castigate, to blame – worse still, to share. I felt this sudden, overwhelming urge to unload! To unburden, to spill out my guts to that awful Miss Hahn with her … her frayed collar, her fat dog, her man’s trousers and her Soviet-style nose. But why her? Why then? Why there? Eh?!

Happenstance. Pure happenstance! A fluke. She could’ve been anyone! That’s why. And worse still, I’m sure I even found myself thinking: eyes on the prize, Franklin! This could actually prove useful – playing the sympathy card! I did! I swear! But then I suddenly realized (hammer-blow – bang!) that without Kimberly there was no meaning – no book (and no Advance! Bang, bang! Double whammy!). And I also realized that I couldn’t play the card if I didn’t accept the feeling. And I didn’t accept it. No! I just didn’t. So I stopped myself. I tried to find a suitable cover for my confusion. My mind was racing (but there was no race, no track, just miles and miles of empty air) and I found myself blurting out … Uh … What? Did I say that the dog was fat? Yes. Yes. I think I did, actually. But then the dog is fat. Big deal! I merely stated a known fact! No harm done there, then.

And so I calmly walked on. And a while later it started to rain. And I can remember the pebbles and the rocks all shiny in the wet. And my shoes – dress shoes – splattered with mud. And I remember how high the cliffs were. So high. So improbably high … Woo! Woo-hoo! (I’m spinning around, gazing upwards, woo-hooing, like a jackass) … Oh look – there … See that black bird, just circling above? Is it a raven? A chough? Do they even have choughs in this part of the British Isles? Or ravens for that matter? Uh … No. Possibly not. What’s that …? (Stops spinning, staggers slightly.) What’s that extraordinary … uh …?

And then … And then – Wham! Bam! Alakazam! – forty-eight hours had passed me by, in what felt like the merest of breaths, and I was waking up in the cells with the mother of all hangovers, a tin bucket by the bed, splayed across a creepy, squeaky, rubber-coated mattress, no bed-linen, no blanket, not so much as a pillow – a humble pillow – to rest my pounding head upon.

Oh. And there was a baby rabbit tucked away snugly inside my vest. My suit was still wet. The pockets were full of leaves. White ash? Eucalyptus? After approximately five minutes a young constable brought me some sweet tea and said that they were releasing me without charge but I needed to provide them with some details of my identity. I had no idea at this stage that I was missing an entire day. A day had been stolen! But by whom?! My wallet (a matter of secondary importance; it was empty, remember?) was also gone. Apparently I’d been apprehended by a passing member of the local foot patrol – in riotous mood (me, not the copper) – drinking on the beach the previous morning with a couple of reprobate old fisher-folk. I’d tried to break into a church: St Thomas of Canterbury and the English Martyrs (in St Leonards) which contains exquisite painted murals (stencils, but still lovely) by Nathaniel Westlake, no less. Amazing. Yes – yes! I had broken in (I have no memory of this) and I’d confessed a pile of hysterical mumbo-jumbo, in Spanish, to the priest, then knelt and prayed with him (we’d conversed freely – he was born and raised in Alicante), then jumped up and ran off. I’d tried to make a sled out of a bakery pallet and had careered down the Old London Road on it (I was relatively successful, in other words), ending up in a large bush of pampas grass (slightly cut lip – evidence of white fluff in hair). I had stolen and eaten half a loaf. I was wearing lipstick (yes!). Orange lipstick. In giant circles around my eyes. Three cigarettes had been stubbed out on the top of my hand. My right hand. And the rabbit? A dwarf breed. Quite rare. Of indeterminate age, it transpires. Nobody knew where it had come from, only that I’d been finding great solace in it. The officer had kindly fed it a carrot.