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‘A nice, little potato in hiz exhaust, hah?!’ Shimmy volunteers.
Forty minutes later and I am walking Rogue on the beach (or – strictly speaking – dragging him along behind me like a giant and mutinous, heavily lactating sow) when who should I see striding towards me, at improbable speed (head down, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets) but the man of the moment: Mr Franklin D. Huff! I observe that his footwear is completely unsuitable: black, patent-leather dress shoes clumsily kicking up giant arcs of sand and shingle! I pity him his unsuitable footwear! I do. No, no, really I do.
I stand and await his approach (while Rogue laboriously masticates a piece of sea kale), hoping that he has settled on a date for my maintenance trip. But instead of stopping when he draws abreast of me, he just storms straight on past! No acknowledgement of any kind! None! Not even so much as a cursory nod!
I turn, rather astonished, and call after him – ‘Have you worked out a time yet, Mr Huff? For the maintenance works?’ – and am shocked when he spins around on his name as if stung, stares at me, in complete amazement, then down at the dog, then back up at me again, his lean face contorting wildly, points an accusing finger at us both and virtually yells, ‘What on earth are you thinking, Miss Hahn? To feed a dog to that monstrous size? Whatever possessed you? It’s an act of the most extreme cruelty! An obscenity! A crime against nature! It’s a travesty, don’t you see? Call that care?! Call that love?! Shame on you, Miss Hahn! Shame on you for not knowing any better! Shame on you, Miss Hahn! And shame on your idiotic father!’
Then off he storms.
I can only … I can’t …
Deep breath. Deep breath. Count backwards, slowly, from twenty to one.
Deep breath. That’s better. Good. That’s …
AAAARRRRGHHH! It’s virtually impossible for me to describe the violent effect Mr Huff’s insulting words have on me! How dare he? How dare he?! The initial confusion followed by the shock, followed by the embarrassment, followed by the outrage … That this man, that this … this … that this awful, arrogant … URGH! I’m just … I am just … I am shaking from head to toe. I am slightly dizzy. I blink. Everything blurs. I blink again. I feel this … this heat in my belly, in my chest. I open my mouth and I simply … I pant! I pant like a wounded beast! And then I feel something burning on my cheeks. Tears! He has made me cry! Mr Huff has made me cry! And I am so angry that Mr Huff has made me cry that I pant even harder. And my stomach is hurting. It’s hurting. (I am hit! I am stung!)
I turn and head back in the direction from which I came. Everything is misty. I sense my feet pounding across the sand. Rogue is dragging along behind me. Several figures enter my peripheral vision but they are nothing, merely fleshy shadows. One of them speaks. It is Georgie Hulton who is digging up lugworms. I can’t answer. I just keep on walking. After about thirty or so paces I stop, with a gasp, drawn up short by the macabre sight of a small, dead sand shark, its belly split open, its guts writhing with tiny, pupating maggots. I stare at it for several minutes, and only the clarity of its predicament – the horror of its outline, the exquisite brightness of its intestines – restores me to anything remotely akin to a semblance of normality.
Damn him! Damn Mr Huff! I hate him! I hate Mr Huff! I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!
4
Mr Franklin D. Huff (#ubbb81443-c2ca-5d78-906f-c07893a79e0a)
Kimberly Couzens is dead. Kimberly – my Kimberly – dead! Lara just rang. There was a garbled message when I got back to the cottage. ‘I’m sorry, Franklin, but Kimberly is dead. She died. Something to do with a tooth. It was very quick. I just spoke with her mother. She died on Saturday. Four, five days ago. The funeral’s on Friday. I’m really sorry. I know you might find that hard to believe after … well. Yes. No need to go back over it all again, eh? I just want you to know that I’m very sorry, Franklin. Honestly. I’m … Okay. Bye.’
I listened to the message three times (‘Something to do with a tooth?!’) and then rapidly calculated back. I spoke to Kimberly five days ago and she was absolutely fine. Vital. Exuberant. Laughing. Mocking. Alive. So how on earth is this possible? How can she be dead? How? After everything she survived? And why do I feel so … so empty, so flat? Not angry. Not raging. Not tearful. Not …
It almost seems – disappointing. A let-down. Laughable.
Kimberly – snuffed out. Defunct. Dead. She hopped the twig. She popped her clogs. Stupid, hopeful, brave, indefatigable Kimberly. Dead. Dead.
Oh God, what the hell to do now? The funeral’s on Friday, but I’m broke! Can’t even afford the plane fare. The stupid travel agent – the bastard airline won’t … ‘What?! Not even on compassionate grounds?’ I yelled.
Oh God. She’s dead. Where to go? How to …? I’m only here because of Kimberly. I’m here for her. As a favour. Because of her dotty mother. We’d been agonizing about Trudy’s declining health for months – upwards of a year, in fact. She’d been growing increasingly confused, woolly, dithery – and Kim simply couldn’t cope. I mean Trudy was meant to be Kim’s buffer – her back-stop, her support (a rich irony!). Bottom line was, Trudy needed to go into sheltered accommodation.
But how the heck to afford it? After much heart-searching and arguing and sulking (in equal measure, on both our parts) Kimberly Fed-Exed me the only remaining thing of any value she possessed: the negatives of those infernal photos – the ‘picture diary’ of Bran Cleary, Kalinda Allaway and their daughter, Orla, ‘in hiding’, that infamous late summer of 1972.
I was given a brief to sell them to the highest bidder, and had agreed a good price for her – with a fair amount of wrangling – but then Kimberly underwent a sudden (not untypical) change of heart, damn her (Damn Kimberly! Damn her! Poor Kimberly. Dead Kimberly). She’d found out something unpalatable about the purchaser and had developed a whole host of last-minute ‘scruples’. We didn’t discuss the details. It was obviously a painful subject for us both. But we rose above – same as we always do. Same as we always did – Kim and me. Kim and I. We two. Us.
The Catholic Church was interested, obviously, but Kimberly wouldn’t countenance the idea, just on the off-chance … Well, I suppose she thought they might simply get swallowed up (her gorgeous images) – subsumed – in a maelstrom of clerical bureaucracy. It was illogical. But that’s Kim for you. Or that was Kim, before …
‘Something to do with a tooth?’
It was stupid. And time-consuming. And expensive. I complained about the cost (human, financial). ‘I have an import/export business to run in Monterrey,’ I grumbled, ‘and a tower of translation work to be done.’ The truth was that the photos had already disappeared – to all intents and purposes – by dint of being stuck in an old trunk at the end of Kim’s bed for the past twelve years. But that was okay, apparently. That was different. Kim wasn’t their jailer, she insisted, but a broody hen perched lightly atop. This handful of fragile spools was Kimberly’s creative and emotional legacy. She never said it, because it didn’t need saying. It was the unsayable. But I knew.
She was highly conflicted over the whole thing. We both were. In the end she persuaded me to go to a publisher with them, to flog them (for less money) in the guise of a book, but the publisher offering the best price (and it was a good price, a great price) still wanted text – context. Who might be expected to provide that? Kim herself? No. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – trust herself. ‘I was way too close to the whole thing,’ she insisted, ‘and I’m “the bad guy”, remember? The scapegoat?’
‘Well maybe you should try and see this as an opportunity,’ I valiantly suggested, ‘a chance to alter those popular misconceptions …’
‘But are they?’ she murmured. ‘Misconceptions, I mean?’
I couldn’t answer. I really wish now that I had – in retrospect – just with … I don’t know … the benefit of hindsight. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to respond. Call it mean-spiritedness. Call it pride. Call it whatever you damn well like. You’re probably right.
‘I was blind-sided by it all,’ she sighed, ‘I was bowled over … seduced. And above and beyond that, I really don’t want the whole “tragic” angle to eclipse … well … “the work”.’
In a toss-up – a fair gamble – Kimberly would always – always – have opted for death over pity. Poor Kimberly. So defiant. So flawed. So proud. So …
Scared? Was it fear that kept them quiet?
Superstition?
Loyalty?
What was it? What was the indelible hold Bran Cleary had over them all: strange, little Orla, crazy Kalinda, the countless others? Witchcraft? Voodoo? Charm? Art?!
‘Okay, Kim,’ (yet another international call at completely the wrong time of day. Kim isn’t – wasn’t – ever happy unless a conversation was charged at peak rates. It was her last great extravagance. ‘Keeps you on your toes, Frankie-boy,’ she’d laugh, ‘keeps you sharp!’) ‘so who else, then? Eh?’ I demanded. ‘Who else can be trusted? Any suggestions, Oh Wise One?’
‘I do have somebody in mind,’ Kim confided, and then, with typical unreasonableness – balls-out, that was my Kim – suggested Franklin D. Huff. Yes. Me. Franklin D., no less: currently occupying the not-especially-coveted role of Jilted Lover. Betrayed Friend. Fall-Guy. Stooge.
There were weeks of heated negotiations. ‘You seriously feel you can trust me with this?’ I was astonished – touched – horrified! Trust me? I could barely trust myself! Wasn’t I the last person to be trusted? The most angry? The most cynical? The most dark? The most wounded? ‘That’s precisely why, Franklin,’ she’d chuckled (I always loved her laugh), ‘and because – when push comes to shove – you’re a born professional.’
This was not a commission I was eager to accept. Quite the opposite. This was the story I’d been running away from – at high speed – for twelve, long years. Several others (some reputable, others less so) had been pitilessly tossed against the jagged rocks of this sorry tale and left horribly becalmed. There were just way too many angles. The narrative was dangerously overloaded. How to gain access? There was the mysterious death of Bran Cleary while on remand, for starters, after a bomb (the second bomb he’d been ‘unwittingly’ connected with) planted – or being stored? Transported? – in the boot of his car went off. All the dodgy political stuff. There was the curious disappearance of crazy Kalinda, aka ‘Lonely’ Allaway, his wife (the fame-hungry vengeful Australian shepherdess). And Orla? Poor, sweet Orla Nor Cleary – their daughter? The tiny-armed girl visionary? Where even to start with that particular hornets’ nest?
‘Simply go back to Mulberry,’ Kim sighed (with typical clarity), making it sound like the simplest undertaking in the whole world, ‘and just inhale the atmosphere. You missed out the first time around. Aren’t you intrigued to have a little snoop about? Apparently they’ve kept the cottage exactly as it was – like a kind of shrine. They do short- and medium-term rentals. They’re very picky about tenants, though, so keep your head down. Be discreet. Why not invite Lara along for the ride? Build some bridges. Make it into a little holiday! I’ll cover all expenses from the advance. Try and reach out to the people who were there – on the periphery, in the background. Knit. Walk. Relax. Breathe. It doesn’t have to be the final word or anything, just a … I don’t know … a cut and paste job – a kind of collage, a human collage.’
‘But none of them will talk!’ I argued.
‘Several of them already have,’ she corrected me. And she was perfectly right. Several had.
Of course what I didn’t tell Kimberly was that we actually needed way more than that. To raise any kind of worthwhile sum on the photos I’d had to make a series of strategic promises to the publisher – moral compromises, of sorts – which Kimberly (as yet) had no inkling of. They wanted to smash the whole Bran Cleary cover-up wide open. They wanted a hatchet job on Kalinda. And Orla? That all-too-familiar ‘victim of circumstance’ schtick writ large: the ever-popular ‘vulnerable minor led astray by the wicked Catholic machinations of Father Hugh Tierney’ angle.
Why did they want these things, exactly? Oh … They wanted them because, well, I’d promised them. I’d offered them all up on a platter. Kim’d thank me for it in the long term, I was certain. Once I’d exonerated her – and, by extension, myself – once the royalties started rolling in. She said it herself: I was a consummate professional (a professional what, though?! Cuckold? Fool? Dupe?).
Let’s face it – this was the story dear, old Kimberly (dead Kimberly) was too close to tell: the awful truth. Although how to gain access to it, first-hand? Kim was right: several people had spoken out publicly, yes, but only the small players – the bit parts – and never candidly. Father Tierney had become a Benedictine monk and entered a monastery. He was virtually a non-starter. Father Paul Lynch (of Rye, now retired) had proven curiously gnomic and diffident. Seems they’d all contracted the disease Kim herself had fallen prey to.
Although Carla Hahn, Kim had confided, was definitely the one to watch out for. She’d been the family’s nanny and cleaner during their time in Pett Level and had later inherited the house. ‘She was very quiet, rarely spoke. I don’t know why, but I always thought of her as “the other camera”. She had this strangely unsettling watchful quality about her. Engaged but unengaged. Hardly uttered a word to me the whole week I was there. Smiled a lot. A strange girl, very tight – tender – with the child, training to be a nurse.’
Carla was the key, Kim maintained, the ‘inside-outsider’.
So I came. I waited. I made connections with the other witnesses. Lara left; there’d always been … well … fault-lines. I drank heavily for a few weeks. Just the atmosphere of this place – the house. This awful feeling of … the simplicity, the roaring quiet, the certainty. An unbearable itchiness. In my head. In my soul. As if the place, the sea, the furniture, the entire house were all slowly rejecting me. Developing a gradual intolerance. I know it sounds …
Or was that just …?
Then the phone call – the garbled message. Kimberly Couzens was dead. Dead! Something to do with a botched tooth extraction. Kimberly Couzens was dead.
I left the cottage in my suit and dress shoes. I was empty, flat (remember?) and I was paradoxically Day-Glo; blank and cynical, yet strobing with emotion. Urgh! I was neither. I was both. I was confused. I was walking away from my feelings and I was running straight into them. It wasn’t … I wasn’t … I … I dunno.
I staggered down on to the beach. I just put one foot in front of the other. I tried not to think. I tried desperately to process the news. I could, but I couldn’t.
Of course we had never been formally divorced, Kim and I. It was one of the many things Lara couldn’t forgive me for. Yes, I petitioned for divorce: 23rd December 1972. She was still in Ireland. In hospital. The date is singed into my brain with a cattle iron – the day of the Managua earthquake. Even my hurt, my outrage at Kim’s devastating betrayal couldn’t be allowed to take centre stage, couldn’t bask, bleeding, in the limelight. Nope. God went and killed 2,000 people, in one stroke, and I – by necessity – was left feeling petty and pitiful.
It was tough. I was wounded (I was wounded! What a joke!). But her burns were so bad that I couldn’t follow through with it. We were a team. Above and beyond everything else, Kim and I were a team. I was the ears, she was the eyes. Funny to think of it that way now. The ears stopped working a long time ago. They waxed up. They froze. They ceased functioning. Why? I have so many reasons, each one so tiny and humble and insignificant; each one merely an ant – or a black, darting termite – but collected together? An infestation. A great hill. An immovable mountain.
And the eyes? After the ‘accident’, they thought they could save at least one of them – on the right-hand side. It was her camera eye, her all-seeing eye. She had such high hopes for it. She was such a fighter. But full vision never returned. And she was melted, poor Kim, like a candle.
We moved her into a granny flat in Toronto. Her mother, Trudy (the actual granny), lived upstairs. And everything cost. From that moment onward, everything was calibrated – rage, hurt, resignation, paranoia, claustrophobia, frustration, resentment – through a shiny curtain of dollars and cents. I opened my import/export business in Monterrey, Mexico. We struggled along, me here, her there. How else to manage it?
Did I forgive her? No. Did I stop loving her? No. Could I let go? No. And Bran Cleary? My dear friend Bran (whose injuries had totalled a slightly sprained wrist, some bruising and a broken nose because – ever the gentleman – he had opened the car door for her – for my wife!). Did I forgive him? No. Did I stop loving him? No. Could I let go? Yes. Yes. Yes.
I let go. I moved on. I never wanted to feel that way again. People have often asked me my professional opinion (although what profession I belong to now I struggle to decipher – laughing stock? Entrepreneur? Crook? Social worker?). Did Bran deserve what happened to him? Was it all just bad luck? A conspiracy? Was it revenge? Murder? Something beyond that – the (God forbid!) ‘supernatural’?
No more questions! I just didn’t want to speculate. I didn’t want to engage. I didn’t want to let it all in again. And yet here I was, immersed in the whole mess right up to my chin, resenting every moment, hating every moment. Wishing I was dead. Why did she ask me? Why did I agree to it? And now Kim. Poor Kim. Brave Kim. Un-Kim.
Call that … call that fair?!
5
Miss Carla Hahn (#ubbb81443-c2ca-5d78-906f-c07893a79e0a)
The eternally fragrant, sweet-natured and well-meaning Alys Jane Drury is absolutely appalled by what I have done (how might I have imagined it could be otherwise?).
‘Whatever possessed you, Carla?’ she demands. ‘He’s such a nice man! So very interesting. Debonair. Handsome. All those lovely curls! And so incredibly polite. I just don’t understand how …’
She is silent for a moment. I hold my breath and press the receiver even tighter into my ear.
‘It’s so out of character!’ she finally declares. ‘Did Shimmy put you up to it?’
‘No,’ I insist (perhaps a split-second too quickly), ‘it was all my idea. I mean Shimmy wasn’t happy – after the incident with Rolfie, obviously …’
‘But you said Mr Huff had already apologized for that.’
‘Yes. He had. Well, in a manner of speaking. The letter was very arrogant. And a complete tissue of lies about the exact circumstances of—’
‘To protect everyone’s feelings, perhaps?’ she interrupts.
I ignore this. ‘He actually went so far – in the letter – as to admit to not even liking cats.’
‘I don’t like cats,’ Alys snorts. ‘Well, not especially,’ she qualifies.
‘But that’s because you love birds, Alys!’ I insist.
‘Franklin – Mr Huff – likes birds,’ she counters. ‘He made a huge fuss of the parrot when he visited. Teobaldo even allowed him to stroke his chest. And Teobaldo hates people. He won’t even let me do that. We spent ages talking about the birds of Me-hico. He collects feathers – exotic feathers. For the shrunken heads. But he never kills anything. He’s very strong on conservation. Very respectful of the environment which I thought was just lovely.’
‘Shrunken …?’ I echo weakly, half-remembering something along the same lines that Mrs Barrow had said.
‘Didn’t he tell you? He has a business which manufactures shrunken heads. The kind you get in Peru. He makes them in Me-hico and exports them. They’re incredibly beautiful. He showed me a sales pamphlet. I mean disgusting but beautiful. Hand-stitched. Extraordinary. Some sell for thousands of dollars. People collect them. He makes them with carved animal bones and skins. He has a small team of ex-gangsters and addicts in Monterrey working for him. The whole enterprise is run like a kind of social programme …’
I think it would be fair to say that Mrs Alys Jane Drury (widow) has been thoroughly won over by Mr Frankin D. Huff (con-artist). The woman is besotted.
‘Rather odd, don’t you think,’ I muse, ‘that Mr Huff should come here with the express intention of finding out things about you, and then should end up talking endlessly all about himself?’ I pause, meaningfully. ‘Did it ever dawn on you that maybe …?’
‘It might all be just a ruse?’ Alys promptly fills in for me, sharp as a tack. ‘A “technique”? To beguile me? Uh, yes. It did occur to me, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh,’ I say, deflated, ‘well, good.’
‘It may interest you to know that several times in the course of our labyrinthine discussions he actually encouraged me to hold things back. He’d say, “Let’s not trespass any further into that, Alys. I can see how you’re struggling. Save it. Preserve it. Some things need to remain truly inviolate …”’
‘Are you serious?!’
After even only the briefest of acquaintances with Mr Huff, I find it difficult to imagine him readily employing the phrase ‘truly inviolate’.
‘Absolutely,’ Alys insists.
‘And then what?’ I ask.
‘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!’
