Rabbit? He instantly jumps back into sharp relief.
Mrs Barrow said you were building it a hutch.
Yes, he sighs, I suppose I am.
It might be worth popping down to see Shimmy, Carlas dad, I suggest. His wife Else, Carlas mother used to keep rabbits when Carla was a kid. She bred some kind of German lop. Huge beasts, they were. They ate them. After the war
Mr Huff is staring at me with a strange look on his face. You might almost call it a a haunted look.
And they kept rescue dachshunds, I blather on. She had about twelve of them, in kennels. It was a long time ago now, obviously. But hes a great hoarder. He might still have something useful tucked away in one of his sheds.
Mr Huff nods, but he doesnt look especially taken by the idea.
I mean theres no harm in asking, I persist.
Its just that my my wife ran over his cat he starts off, then he frowns. Although shes not shes not shes not not actually my
He shakes his head and his mouth suddenly contracts. He stops walking as we reach the back balcony, plops himself down on to the bench and covers his lean face with his skinny hands.
Its all he sniffs, trying to retain some vague hold on his dignity (failing dismally), all very confused confusing.
Can I ? Uh Would you like me to ? I dont even know what Im suggesting I should do. Leave? Spontaneously combust? Gently evaporate? Quietly hang myself? (Oh shed like that, wouldnt she?! The cow Author? Well then I most definitely wont be hanging myself, I mean. No. I wont be hanging myself. Im far too tall to be hanging myself, for one thing. Itd be so difficult to arrange. Although theres always the barn back on the farm, I suppose. Not that Ive got any rope strong enough to uh aside from the blue nylon stuff Eddies been using to tether the
What?!
No!
Why am I thinking like this?! Ive never had these kinds of thoughts before suicidal thoughts. And if I was going to kill myself it wouldnt be by rope, itd be sat quietly in the van with a grand view below me, up near the Country Park, maybe, engine running, blocked exhaust Although with all that rust and the missing door theres not much chance
No!
Im doing it again! Shes got me doing it again! I wont be killing myself! I feel no urge to kill myself! None! Im very much here larger than life. I am substantially here. And Im not going down without a fight, madam, you can be bloody sure of that! Bloody sure!
Good.)
I turn and take in the view. The sea view. This is the most beautiful view in all the world. Just scrubland and then sea. Well, the Channel, really. Just the bit of rough scrub, the ribbon of Sea Road following the sea wall, the pebble beach, the sea, the clouds, the sky.
Yes. No. My wife died, he blurts out (how much time has passed? Loads? None?). Very suddenly. Three days ago. Im just
Sorry? I turn, surprised (in truth Id almost forgotten he was there).
My wife, he repeats, died. Dead. She
I must look shocked slightly disbelieving. Embarrassed. I mean this started out as a conversation about hutches didnt it? Didnt it? About rabbits?
Not the cat woman, he commences, waving his hand about. She wasnt my wife. I was its complicated. Theres a woman called You might have heard of shes called Kimberly. Kimberly Couzens. Shes 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. Im here for her. He nods, pathetically grateful to be understood. I came for her. And Im broke. Completely broke. I agreed to write the book as a sort of a sort of favour. Im not sure how it I mean Im not really sure And then then she just died. I mean shes 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! Ive not eaten in four days. Ive not Ive not told anyone Im just The flight couldnt be changed. I cant go back for the funeral. Her mother has dementia. Its been then the shark the flies. Its been Ive been
Still the arm waving.
really really struggling, he finishes off, his voice cracking.
I dont know what to say.
I dont know what to say, I say.
Im furious. In fact, Im steaming. I cant 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 wont be drawn into this bloody farrago! And Im 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 didnt I know that?! I mean if I knew about the parrot. Whyd 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 dont 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?
Im always here. I nod. Thats 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 didnt I already know that?
I shrug (cow Author not doing her job, I suppose).
Thats never been mentioned, Mr Huff persists, I mean there isnt 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 heres 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).
Oh, here it is heres 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).
Its my size. I shrug. Im so huge that people kind of they pass me over. Its difficult to engage. They ignore me the way youd ignore a giant bear.
Youre 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 dont 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. Thats the only way I can describe them the feelings. Dark. I mean to be so easily so so routinely ignored.
Whos behind this I wonder? Whos at the back of this? Is it her? The Author? Has she gone back into the photographers portfolio, the photographers mind and just just silently erased ?
Oh for heavens 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 cant 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 wont divulge here, because its 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! Its me, Clifford, the Invisible Man!
The invisible man, eh? Ha! Well well see about that, shall we, my little pink-eyed friend, hmmn?
12
Mr Franklin D. Huff
Its because Im 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 dont 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 Im 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 Ive consumed in the past three days (that Im consciously aware of) is a tangerine. Or a satsuma. Or a clementine.
Im broke. Broke! Kim had promised to send me a cheque just as soon as the advance came through
Dammit!
And now shes shell be for ever indubitably incontrovertibly
Ka-ka-ka-put.
Ker-plunk.
Doiiiing!
So I go over to Mr Hahns cottage (its only a short walk) to enquire about the rabbit cage A rabbit cage? This is ridiculous! Ridiculous! And I am approaching the front door when I hear a kind of a little wail. A pathetic, little wail. A cat? An injured hedgehog? An amorous fox? So I jink left, to the side of the property, down a badly kept gravel path and I see I see How to put this politely? A bum in the air. High up. Halfway over a tall gate. Two slim legs kicking aimlessly.
Of course to free up my hands to help (of course but of course!) I am obliged to fill my mouth with the rest of the tangerine satsuma clementine. But then I cant I cant communicate! Ridiculous! So I I kind of I pat the bottom gently, to alert it to my presence, move the bike (yes, theres a bike), try and grab the foot to
I know. Yes. I do know that its Carla Hahns foot (who else could it possibly belong to but she?). It is, isnt it? Yes. It is. Its her foot. And (for the record), one of her deck shoes is falling off, revealing an old sock with a giant hole in the heel (so unfeminine! So unedifying!). She kicks out this foot, emitting another curious little yelp. And I see that her awful trousers with the roped-up waist, or another pair just like them equally unflattering have become hooked over a little jutting piece of wood. The belt has become hooked, I mean, the rope belt. So I say I mean Im speaking, although not especially well what with the half tangerine (all this is happening very quickly, much more rapidly than I could hope to describe it a mere matter of seconds) I say, Brace yourself. Im going to unhook your jeans from a little uh
And I unhook them. In fact I untie them. And then she falls like a bag of potatoes, out of the trousers. She disappears from view. The heel of her old white plimsoll almost smacks me in the face.
Oh balls!
Hello? Can you hear me? Are you all right?
Short silence, followed by a door opening and someone speaking in a thick, German accent, followed by the gate-person, the fallen person (Miss Hahn) yowling plaintively, Ive dislocated my thumb!
Im not sure why, exactly, but I suddenly think that this might be a good time to make myself scarce. Im not Im not running away, as such, no. Im just not not emotionally equipped to engage with all this right now. I didnt I didnt ask for this to happen. I mean I should be planning a funeral, attending a funeral. And if not in fact, well, then at least in my fevered brain. The perfect funeral for Kimberly. A fantasy funeral for darling Kimberly, my recently deceased
I just dont need all this all this uh
When I return to the cottage (a little out of breath, slightly furtive, perhaps) I find the big man, Clifford Pemberton (Is it Pemberton?) sitting out front on the bench. He is deep in thought. He has the rabbit in his hand. It fits, in its entirety, into his giant palm.