‘Not the cat woman,’ he commences, waving his hand about. ‘She wasn’t my wife. I was … it’s complicated. There’s a woman called … You might have heard of … she’s called Kimberly. Kimberly Couzens. She’s a photographer. We were married. She had the affair with … with him … you know. Bran. She was burned. In the explosion – the car – when he …’
‘Oh … Oh wow,’ I stutter, finally making the connection. ‘The Canadian? The photographer? She was your wife?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m here for her.’ He nods, pathetically grateful to be understood. ‘I came for her. And I’m broke. Completely broke. I agreed to write the book as a sort of … a sort of favour. I’m not sure how it … I mean I’m not really sure … And then … then she just died. I mean she’s been disabled for years – with the burns being so severe … But this was something so sudden … so … so random, something to do with a tooth. A tooth! I’ve not eaten in four days. I’ve not … I’ve not told anyone … I’m just … The flight couldn’t be changed. I can’t go back for the funeral. Her mother has dementia. It’s been … then the shark … the flies. It’s been … I’ve been …’
Still the arm waving.
‘… really … really struggling,’ he finishes off, his voice cracking.
I don’t know what to say.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I say.
I’m furious. In fact, I’m steaming. I can’t believe the cow Author has sprung this on me. What a cow. What a cow.
I turn and inhale the view again. I refuse, no, no, I won’t be drawn into this bloody farrago! And I’m angry that I thought I had it all down pat … this … this situation … the set-up … the plot … but now to find out that my knowledge has been … well, just selective … compromised. He was married to the photographer! Why didn’t I know that?! I mean if I knew about the parrot. Why’d I know about the sodding parrot – all about it! – but nothing about this?
I breathe in deeply and force myself to enjoy the view. The view is still here. The view is still beautiful.
Behind me I hear him sobbing.
Oh God, why? Why?
‘Well, you still need a hutch,’ I maintain. Still looking at the view. Still feeding off the view. I really love this view. I could happily die looking at this view.
‘Yes,’ he sniffs.
No more thoughts about dying. I reach into my pocket.
‘Tangerine?’
I turn and offer it to him.
‘Thanks.’
He accepts the tangerine.
‘I don’t think I actually met her,’ I say. ‘Your wife. The photographer. But I did see her around and about the place. On the beach with her camera photographing everything …’
He glances up, sharply. ‘You were here back then?’
‘I’m always here.’ I nod. ‘That’s me. A part of the landscape – a blot on the landscape. In fact I was … uh … Carla and I were …’ I shrug.
‘Oh. Oh, really?’
Mr Huff looks slightly surprised. ‘So you were … Oh. So you were here – resident – when everything uh …?’ He scowls. ‘But why didn’t I already know that?’
I shrug (cow Author not doing her job, I suppose).
‘That’s never been mentioned,’ Mr Huff persists, ‘I mean there isn’t any physical evidence, any testimony … and documentary evidence in all of the … all of the …’
He starts feeling for his pockets (grief briefly forgotten) as if the information relating to my early life in Pett Level might be miraculously contained therein.
Oh, here it is – here’s the little bit of paper all about what an insignificant lump of crap you are (cheerfully holds out tiny till receipt with hardly anything printed on it).
‘It’s my size.’ I shrug. ‘I’m so huge that people kind of … they pass me over. It’s difficult to engage. They ignore me the way you’d ignore a giant bear.’
‘You’re the elephant in the room.’ Mr Huff grins, weakly.
‘Yes.’
‘But how odd,’ he repeats, shaking his head again, ‘that Kimberly never mentioned you, never photographed you. She worked as a war photographer for several years. Her photographs were amazingly … I don’t know … comprehensive, habitually copious, all-inclusive …’
As he speaks I quietly remember Kimberly and her camera. On the beach, in the garden, the house. Yes. I remember the camera always snapping. I remember – countless times, countless times – being briefly blinded by the flash.
‘I should go and take a quick peek at that bathroom window,’ I say. There are dark feelings in my heart. That’s the only way I can describe them – the feelings. Dark. I mean to be so easily … so … so routinely ignored.
Who’s behind this I wonder? Who’s at the back of this? Is it her? The Author? Has she gone back into the photographer’s portfolio, the photographer’s mind and just … just silently erased …?
Oh for heaven’s sake!
Just fix the window, Rusty! Just go and fix the window!
I walk through the cottage to the bathroom (ducking to avoid the door lintels, the light fitments). When I get there I realize that I have no tools with me. The ceiling is very low. I can’t straighten my neck. And there is a rabbit in the bath. A tiny rabbit. It has a very … a very deep, a quiet, an almost … a mystical quality about it.
Pink eyes. Pink nose.
I perch on the edge of the bath and I watch it. I look like I am communing with the rabbit (from the outside, in the uncut footage), and I am – but I am also hatching a plan. Yes. Me – I – Clifford Bickerton, Rusty Bickerton. I am hatching a plan. A secret plan. Which I won’t divulge here, because it’s a secret, obviously.
Every so often I think, Is this her? Is this her plan? Or is it me?
And then I expunge those thoughts (expunge? Is that a word I would use, naturally? Is it my word or is it … Oh God, is it her word?). I stare at the little rabbit.
Hello, rabbit! It’s me, Clifford, the Invisible Man!
The invisible man, eh? Ha! Well we’ll see about that, shall we, my little pink-eyed friend, hmmn?
12
It’s because I’m so over-wound, so damn tired. I mean to be … to find myself intent on building a rabbit cage (a rabbit cage! A rabbit cage!) when I should actually be … I don’t know … arranging the flowers. She loved freesias, hyacinths, old-variety pinks (those foul, dirty-looking ones), anything aromatic, anything with a scent in other words.
Yes. I should be involved – on hand. Worrying about the details. I should be selecting the coffin, bearing the coffin. Choosing the music (something scruffy and pointless and suitably inconclusive by The Band). I should be planning the eulogy. Just being … being there. But instead I’m here. Here. In this hell-hole with its maddeningly attractive English view and its slightly broken-down, chaotic, self-satisfied, bohemian … And the only solid food I’ve consumed in the past three days (that I’m consciously aware of) is a tangerine. Or a satsuma. Or