Copyright
Fourth Estate
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This eBook edition first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
Copyright © Nicola Barker 2014
Nicola Barker asserts the moral right to
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Source ISBN: 9780007583706
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007583713
Version 2015-03-31
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1 Miss Carla Hahn
2 Mr Franklin D. Huff
3 Miss Carla Hahn
4 Mr Franklin D. Huff
5 Miss Carla Hahn
6 Teobaldo
7 Mr Franklin D. Huff
8 Miss Carla Hahn
9 Mr Franklin D. Huff
10 Miss Carla Hahn
11 Mr Clifford Bickerton
12 Mr Franklin D. Huff
13 Miss Carla Hahn
14 Teobaldo
15 Mr Franklin D. Huff
16 Miss Carla Hahn
17 Mr Franklin D. Huff
18 Miss Carla Hahn
19 Mr Franklin D. Huff
20 Teobaldo
21 Miss Carla Hahn
22 Mr Clifford Bickerton
23 Mr Franklin D. Huff
24 Miss Carla Hahn
25 Mr Franklin D. Huff
26 Teobaldo
27 Miss Carla Hahn
28 Mr Franklin D. Huff
29 Miss Carla Hahn
30 Mr Clifford Bickerton
31 Mr Franklin D. Huff
32 Miss Carla Hahn
33 Mr Clifford Bickerton
34 Miss Carla Hahn
35 Mr Franklin D. Huff
36 Miss Carla Hahn
37 Mr Franklin D. Huff
38 Miss Carla Hahn
39 Mr Clifford Bickerton
40 Miss Carla Hahn
41 Mr Franklin D. Huff
42 Miss Carla Hahn
43 Mr Franklin D. Huff
44 Miss Carla Hahn
45 Mr Franklin D. Huff
46 Miss Alys Jane Drury (and Baldo!)
47 Mr Franklin D. Huff
48 Miss Carla Hahn
49 Mr Franklin D. Huff
50 Miss Carla Hahn
51 Mr Franklin D. Huff
52 Miss Carla Hahn
53 Mr Franklin D. Huff
Also by Nicola Barker
About the Publisher
Dedication
For my dear friend, Claire Clifton;
Hastings favourite Floridian
1
Miss Carla Hahn
Well I suppose as we must all seem very dull and pedestrian to such a bold and cosmopolitan gentleman as the likes of our Mr Franklin B. Huff! Mrs Barrow ruminates, borderline resentful, as I hand over a crisp, ten pound note and she shoves it unacknowledged into the pocket of her pristine housecoat. What with all his escapades amongst them hordes of filthy banditos and drug-smugglers and what-not in the dusty prairies of Mexicano.
Mr Franklin D. Huff, I correct her.
He was only telling me the other day as how he keeps a collection of shrunken heads, she continues, eyes widening. Stores em in an old suitcase, he does. No word of a lie, Carla! Thinks as theyre historical artlifacts! she snorts. I says, Wouldnt those be the actual heads of real-life dead folk, Mr Huff? Isnt that a sort of sacrelig? But he just lowers his book and peers at me over his spectacles, all lofty-like. Its the culture there, Mrs Barrow. They have a different way of going about things. Everythings fast and loose. Life is cheap.
The men are men and the women are glad of it! I jokes, but he just returns to his reading, face sour as a slapped arse. So I says, It must all seem very dull and pedestrian here in Pett Level to a chap such as yourself, Mr Huff, what with all your adventurings amongst them buckaroos and rancheros and the shrunken heads and what-not and he says, I cant pretend Im not finding it a little flat, Mrs Barrow, a tad wispy and windswept and prarochial for my tastes, perhaps.
As Mrs Barrow finishes speaking we both gaze up from the bus-stop, in unison, towards the large, concrete block of the old Look Out which crowns the top end of Toot Rock. It is here that Mr Franklin D. Huff is currently sitting, in glorious isolation, fully suited and booted, intermittently gusted by the sea wind, partaking of a picnic lunch.
They say as he went native out amongst all them strumpets and gunsels, Mrs Barrow murmurs, squinting, ominously, into the eternally drab yet still pitifully hopeful early autumn light, but I find that hard to believe, Carla, when I sees him of a morning, sitting on the balcony in his socks and his braces, smoking his pipe like one of those right and proper gentlemen straight off the cover of an old sewing pattern.
Who says that, exactly? I ask, frowning.
I beg yours?
Who says he?
Them Sullivan boys down at the New Beach Club for one, Mrs Barrow interrupts. Seems as hes got his-self temporary membership, she snorts, by hook or by crook
She gives me a significant look. Glory ODowd says as how he drank up their whole stock of gin in the first week after Mrs Huff left. On the second week he comes out in hives. Both cheeks was covered! She chuckles. I thought, Thats the gin, that is! Mothers Ruin! But I kept it schtum as your old dad would say.
She taps her lips with a thick, brown, heavily calloused finger.
You mentioned that hed broken the dining table, I interject, and a chair in the living room?
Mrs Barrow promptly removes the finger. Ive never known a man so accident-prone! she gasps. This morning I heard a yell as I was hanging out the washing. I rushes round there, Carla, and Mr Huff as God is my witness is lying flat on his face in the middle of the allotment, his head in the last of the seasons cabbages. Turns out as he tripped in a badger hole! Sprained his wrist! I says, Did you put out them monkey nuts for the badgers last night, Mr Huff? You know thems the rules at Mulberry Cottage. Miss Hahn is very particular on the monkey nuts being put out. She has herself an arrangement with them badgers, Mr Huff, and they dont likes it one bit if gets itself broke.
She shakes her head, forlornly. I mean there was holes dug all over the lawn, Carla! The leeks was all pulled up! It was chaos pure chaos! But he just cusses and rolls about, belly-aching like a big girl! I mean imagine a man such as that surviving in the tundra, Carla, where theres no laws and no pavements and no manners and no taps? Doesnt bear thinking of!
The dining table I persist.
Later on I see as hes thrown some old soup tins, a fly paper and a broken milk bottle into the flower bed by the little girls shrine, she adds, scowling. I thought, Well thats as why you ended up arse-over-tit, Mr Huff! Shrunken heads or no! You dont need to be messing around with forces beyond your ken, my friend. The tundras your business, Mr Huff, but we has our own ways of going about things up here on Toot Rock. Wispy and prarochial, indeed! Ignore em at your peril, sir!
She shakes her head, scowling.
I suppose I should have a quick word with him, I murmur, registering the hungry grumble of the Rye bus on the Fairlight Road as Mrs Barrow takes out a scarf and ties it around her head, forming a small knot under the chin and pulling the two ends tight with such a jerk that one might almost imagine the cosmopolitan Mr Huffs head compressed between them.
I wont pretend as Im not prone to having the odd grumble about the quality of the furniture in Mulberry, she confides. I know as it has historical value, Carla, and all the rest of it she raises a jaundiced brow but its just a pile of old driftwood and matchsticks for the most part. Even so, how one middle-aged man on his lonesome-ownsome can cause so much mess and mayhem is quite beyond me, I swear!
She reaches out her hand towards the oncoming bus and it slows to a gradual halt with a blood-curdlingly cacophonous squeal of brakes, as if each of her calloused fingers has summoned a banshee from between its wheels.
All as I can say is: I hope his poor wife paid you the full deposit in cold hard cash before she upped and ran off! Mrs Barrow barks over the engine noise, then clambers on board. I pass over her old shopping trolley. It has a tricky wheel on the right-hand side which is sometimes given to seizing up. She grabs it, gives the offending wheel a practised kick, then disappears into the bus with a sharp and suitably conclusive bantam-like cluck.
2
Mr Franklin D. Huff
In the end it was Carla Hahn who approached me. I knew the only way to draw her in the only way would be to ignore her completely. It had taken six weeks, in total. I was sitting on top of the gun emplacement eating a stale, unbuttered roll and a jar of pickled walnuts. She was slightly out of breath after cycling up. Id seen her from atop my airy lookout talking to Mrs Barrow at the request bus-stop on the Sea Road. Mrs Barrow like so many of the permanent residents on Toot Rock, not to mention those of Pett Level in the flatlands below (although the weekenders, I confess, are of a different complexion altogether) appears to hail from an indeterminate epoch. She seems to have no presentiment whatsoever that shes living in a modern age: the 1980s for heavens sake!
This morning, as she skivvied, we had an extraordinary discussion about the Home Computing Revolution. Shed gleaned via the elusive Mr Barrows tabloid rag (Mr Barrow is Toot Rocks very own smooth-skinned McCavity; he may only ever be apprehended as an absence) that something called the Apple Mackintosh was, as of this very day, to be made available, for money, in shops, to the general public. She was unable to comprehend how or why this much heralded object would be in any way better or more useful than a standard typewriter: And they only ever as write out bills to torment us poor working folk with those! she muttered. I silently held up my book. Its all the same to me, she grumbled. Words is words is words is words.