‘That’s fine. Just point me in the right direction and I’ll get on with it, Mrs Barrow,’ I tell her. Mrs Barrow has kindly provided me with a list. At the top is ‘porch bulb’ (in all honesty I think she could’ve handled most of these herself – what am I? Her drudge? Short answers on a postcard, please), then there’s ‘dispose of shark’, then there’s ‘rabbit?’ (her question mark), then ‘bin’, then, finally, ‘bathroom window. Putty?’ (putty underlined, twice).
Of course as soon as Mrs Barrow describes the general scenario (rotting sand shark under the bed?!) I am 100 per cent convinced that the salmon-pink paws of Miss Carla Hahn are all over this ‘mysterious and completely unprovoked attack’. In truth I think Mrs Barrow suspects as much herself, but worker/employer loyalty (and Mr Huff availing himself of the nearby bathroom) prevents her from confiding in me. All credit to her for that. Although there is a brief exchange of significant looks. Yes. And a slightly raised, under-plucked eyebrow. And she is very – very – keen to stop the ‘highly offended’ (‘hurt’, ‘violated!’: his words) Mr Franklin D. from getting the local police involved (but what else might you expect from the wife of the local poacher? Eh?).
I know all the signs, though. In fact I’m so certain of Carla’s involvement that I promptly head over to an old brass coal-scuttle stored just inside the entrance to the bomb shelter (there is a bomb shelter behind the house – a drab, claustrophobic concrete shed-like thing with a basement nobody ever goes into. Did anyone bother mentioning this before? Nah. Probably not) and I retrieve the porch bulb from this old favourite Carla hidey-hole.
I am smiling to myself (even allowing myself a gentle tut) and straightening up when – Oh bugger! – I see Mr Franklin D. Huff standing behind me, arms crossed, braces dangling (‘At ease, Suh!’), watching me from the back with a look full of what I can only call ‘deep misgivings’.
Sorry if there is something grammatically awry with that sentence. But I think you get what I mean. I respond with my broadest hayseed’s smile. This smile is doubly effective because of a missing canine (front top left).
‘Hello, Massa. I just be doin’ my work here, Massa. No need for the likes of you to be troubling yourself on my account, Massa.’
(Touch brim of pretend flat cap.)
I didn’t actually speak that out loud, I just compressed it into a slight bending of the knee and the broad smile, obviously. Especially the smile. Although there’s an extra (bonus!) atmosphere of ‘I might look like a moron – I am a moron – but if you mess about with my Carla – trifle with her – I’m going to … well …’
What might I do?
Bleat like a lamb?
Burst into tears?
Absolutely bloody nothing, same as always?
Oh God, I just had this … this horrible … this shadow-falling-across-my-grave feeling. An icy chill in my … A moment of …
She’s going to make me stand up to him, isn’t she? The cow Author. She’s going to make me act totally out of character – rise to the occasion, give the smug, ‘cosmopolitan’ arsehole what for – and then quickly kill me off. But it’ll be something mundane that does me in – a nosebleed or an infected toenail. Or something completely stupid and embarrassing like … like being squashed under a tractor after diving to save a duckling. Swerving to avoid a weasel and driving off a cliff.
I know that’s what she’s planning.
I suppose I should just be grateful that the over-tight jumper didn’t prove to be my undoing (Ch. 7? Ch. 8?). Although I’m not sure how that would’ve been managed, technically (I’m always interested in the technical side of things. This isn’t much of a virtue in your average romantic hero, I realize. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, Miss Eyre, but the axle on your carriage has noticeable signs of wear …’). To be perfectly frank, it doesn’t have all that much credibility as an idea (dispatched by an over-tight jumper?!). I mean this is only my second chapter! It’s early days yet. To kill me with a lethal piece of knitwear after – how many? – three pages? That’d be so … so clumsy, so amateur. The critics’d have a field day! Although she killed someone in another novel (forget the name of it, offhand) with a frozen, miniature butter pat and then she won a bloody prize. A prize! A big money prize!
What were they thinking?!
In fact there was this very sweet man in her last novel – kind and gentle, a bit of a wimp; rather like me, I suppose (sound the alarm bells!!) – who she hit with a sudden brain haemorrhage just when everything had finally started to work out for him. I don’t remember his name or all the circumstances exactly. But she’s probably planning something similar for me now. Right now.
What a nightmare. What an awful, bloody nightmare.
‘… store your bulbs.’
Franklin D. is speaking but I miss the gist of it worrying about all this other crap. There was one character who fed his fingers to an owl and then walked in front of a bus. Or a lorry. But he was the hero. And I don’t know if he died or not. I think she left it open so that if the book was successful she could write a follow-up. But the thing bombed.
Ha!
Although – damn! – none of this works, logically – logistically (Oh great, Mr Technical!). Because I’m thinking these thoughts in October 1984 and she only started writing seriously in 1987 on a student trip to Ireland while volunteering for the Council for the Status of Women. She wrote a wretched piece of teen fiction during that interlude called ‘The Perverse Yellow Flower’. It was inspired by three paintings of Christ she saw in a shop window in Windsor and a conversation she had while she was looking at them with a man called Marcus who wanted to make her join a weird cult called Sabud.
What?!
Hang on a second …
Where the heck did all that come from? How could I …? I … I just can’t be having these thoughts right now, about her other books and her sadistic urges and her … I dunno. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s … it’s unnatural, it’s supernatural.
‘… store your bulbs.’
Argh. Am I just sabotaging myself again? Same as I always do? Am I? Eh? Mr Bickerton, will you sign on the dotted line for your regular delivery of a truck-load of self-pity, please? Oh you’ve lost your pen. And your pencil. Boo-hoo-hoo.
There’s nothing positive or clever or rational about it, either, is there? I know that. I’m simply stewing in all this stuff – all these regrets. I really need to just try and … I dunno. Grow a set. Stop over-thinking. Stop making everything twice as complicated as it needs to be. Heroes don’t dither, do they? Do they? No. Heroes aren’t ditherers.
Uh. Sorry. Could you just feed me that line again, please?
‘Well that’s a very strange place to store your bulbs!’
Uh … Okay. Uh … I already did the smile, didn’t I? The hayseed’s goofy smile (my staple)? So how about I just repeat what he said back to him and then work the rest out from there?
‘A very strange place to store your bulbs. Yes. Very strange indeed. You must be Mr Huff. You were holed up in the bathroom when I first arrived. I’m Clifford. Clifford Bickerton. People call me Rusty.’
We shake hands.
‘Did you see the shark?’ Mr Huff asks, following me over to the front porch where I quickly re-fit the bulb. ‘Yup.’ I nod (Don’t give anything away, Clifford!).
‘Very convenient being so tall,’ Mr Huff observes.
‘Great for replacing bulbs,’ I affirm, ‘but not so great in other arenas. It’s hard to cram myself inside certain models of car.’
Mr