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Clifford is currently inspecting the rack of cellophane and Sellotape. He picks up a packet of Blu-Tack. He seems deeply engrossed in the writing on the back.
‘Is that her name in Chinese, then?’ Biddy wonders, indicating the top line of the address.
‘No. I think it says something like … uh … “to the crazy, European lady traveller who is walking the Great Wall. I humbly ask that you – the wall guard at Huanghua – please keep this letter for her until she arrives, when she will reward you generously for your kindness. A thousand blessings …” All very flowery and Chinese. I don’t know, exactly … something like that, anyway. She sends me her next contact address enclosed in each letter so I can just cut it out and glue it on to an envelope.’
‘Oh.’ Biddy nods.
‘It’s all fairly hit and miss,’ I continue (suddenly compelled – through guilt and embarrassment – to blather on, inanely). ‘The wall’s over five thousand miles long. Although Tilda seems to think it’s even longer than that. In her last postcard she said she’d recently met someone – a Chinese historian or a geographer – who told her that the wall originally spanned over fifteen thousand miles …’
‘I simply don’t understand why Matilda bothered buying that bungalow in the first place if she never had any plans to live in it,’ Biddy sighs, taking the letter from me and dropping it on to the scales.
‘No.’
Clifford has now moved on to the rack of birthday cards.
‘Although I suppose it gives you a roof over your poor head,’ she kindly concedes, ‘so you can rent out your little cottage in Pett and don’t need to be getting under the feet of your dear old dad.’
‘Yes.’ I nod (concerned that she might be confusing my reassuringly tough head or my utterly incorrigible father with someone else’s head – someone else’s dad – far more deserving than mine).
‘Have you ever actually lived in the cottage since you inherited it?’ she wonders.
‘Uh. No, no. I’ve always been committed to—’
‘Someone’s birthday?’ Biddy raises her voice to finally acknowledge Clifford.
Clifford is inspecting a card very closely. He is so engrossed that he doesn’t seem to hear her.
‘SOMEONE’S BIRTHDAY, RUSTY?’ Biddy bellows.
Clifford’s entire body jolts with surprise. He drops the card then bends down to pick it up, inadvertently bumping into a wicker basket containing bags of kindling.
‘Mine,’ he says, then, ‘Sorry,’ (to the basket).
‘Yours?’ Biddy scowls.
Clifford clumsily retrieves the card.
‘The day before yesterday.’ Clifford nods.
(Oh God! The day of the landslip! I have forgotten Clifford’s birthday again, dammit!) ‘It’s visible from space,’ he adds, as a somewhat lacklustre afterthought, ‘the Great Wall.’
‘Happy birthday for … for …’ I start to murmur, agonized.
‘Are you planning on getting yourself a card, Rusty?’ Biddy wonders, with a supercilious smirk.
‘Uh … no.’
Clifford puts the card back down on to the rack.
‘Thank you,’ he mutters.
‘Because you’re two days late!’ Biddy delivers her ringing punch-line with considerable pizzazz.
‘I was actually just after some … uh … matches.’ Clifford grabs a pile of kindling and then moves over towards the ‘shop’ section of the store. There he grabs a packet of Tuc biscuits and proceeds to the counter which is currently vacant because Biddy is in the P.O.
Biddy snorts, amused, then checks the weight of my letter on her scales and inspects her list of foreign postal prices.
‘I’d be scared stiff to go to bed at night,’ she murmurs, neatly tearing a small selection of stamps from their sheets, ‘I mean you can never be sure. A bit of heavy rain and the clay just … it just slips. And there goes your home! Off a cliff! A high cliff! Into the sea! Everything you own – everything you’ve worked for – all gone! Kaput!’
‘And an airmail sticker, please,’ I remind her.
‘Poor Dr and Mrs Bassett lost the best part of their front kitchen. She said they found the cat in a cupboard almost half-dead with fear.’
‘They were up most of the night calling for it.’ I nod.
‘For the life of me I don’t know why the council doesn’t do more to enforce the demolition order,’ she tuts.
‘Tilda’s place is still perfectly livable,’ I interrupt, ‘and the Bassetts haven’t actually occupied the front kitchen since the last big drop …’
‘You’re all nutty as fruitcakes!’ Biddy mutters, pushing over the stamps and the sticker. ‘That’s two pounds and seventy pence please, Carla.’
I pass her the money, then quickly affix the stamps.
‘Well I suppose we should all just be grateful that nobody was actually hurt on this occasion,’ she concedes, generously.
‘Yes. We should. We are. Thanks.’
‘Although it’s only a question of time if you ask me,’ Biddy persists. ‘There’s no point fighting against nature, Carla. I say that as someone who spent much of their childhood in India – Bangladesh as it now is. The Indians respect Mother Nature. Don’t have any other choice. They know, first-hand, what she’s capable of.’
She hands me my change.
‘I’m sure that’s very true,’ I concede, limply (and I am, too).
Without prior warning, Biddy’s disapproving radar suddenly shifts focus and is now centred on the hapless Clifford.
‘Enjoying that, are we, Rusty?’ she demands, scowling.
Clifford has idly picked up a copy of the local paper from the shop counter and is blankly perusing the front page. He quickly throws it down with a stuttered, ‘Nnn … n … no!’
(Biddy, who was once the headmistress of our local primary school, traumatized several generations of small children with her searching questions, her piercing looks and her perpetual air of slight disapproval until a stubborn hip injury put an end to her reign of terror in 1978 or thereabouts.)
I turn for the door, muttering my thanks, but Biddy stops me in my tracks.
‘Shall I put that in the post-bag?’ she asks, reaching out for the letter. I hand it over, somewhat regretfully (it never feels like you’ve actually sent a letter until it’s been shoved into the hungry mouth of a bright, red postbox. Oh well).
I thank Biddy again and start for the exit. I am actually through the door (jingle-jingle!) and halfway across the little car park before Clifford finally catches up with me, as he inevitably must.
‘I left my stuff on the counter,’ he pants. He is still holding the Tuc biscuits.
‘You’ve still got the Tuc biscuits,’ I observe.
‘Damn.’
Clifford inspects the Tuc biscuits, foiled.
‘You’d better go back in,’ I caution him, ‘or Biddy will eat you alive.’
‘Yes.’ He nods, not moving.
I am about to go on to apologize for not responding to his calls (and his visit etc.) when I can’t help but notice the new jumper he’s wearing, partially hidden under his scruffy, khaki work coat. It’s a pure horror: a fashionable Pringle; pale yellow in the main, the front a vile knitted patchwork of interconnected pink, white and mauve diamonds.
I instinctively wince. ‘Birthday present?’ I ask.
‘Alice.’ He nods. ‘She was so pleased with it – cost her almost a week’s wages. I just didn’t have the …’
‘Does it fit properly?’
I push back the frayed sleeve of his work coat and pull away, worriedly, at the cuff. There’s not so much as a millimetre of give.
‘It’s a bit snug,’ he concedes.
‘Isn’t that interfering with your circulation?’ I wonder.
‘I have no feeling in my hands,’ he confirms.
‘Can you actually get it off?’
‘Nope,’ he sighs. ‘It’ll tear when I do. So I’m just keeping it on for as long as I possibly can.’
‘I did that with a sticking plaster once after a polio injection at school,’ I fondly reminisce, ‘and I developed blood poisoning.’
‘I remember.’ He nods.
‘How high can you lift your arms?’
With considerable difficulty he lifts them to a 65-degree angle.
‘There are two tiny holes at the armpit and the elbow,’ he explains, ‘which have allowed a certain amount of flexibility.’
‘You need to get it off, quick,’ I warn him. ‘Isn’t it difficult to breathe?’
‘I feel entombed’ – he nods – ‘like an Egyptian mummy. Although it’s fine,’ he rallies, ‘so long as I don’t over-exert myself.’
‘But what if you get a call out for the lifeboat?’ I demand.
He shrugs.
‘There are little marks on the side of your neck,’ I observe, with increasing concern, ‘little welts. It’s like …’ I shudder. ‘It’s like an expensive, lambswool python has swallowed you up, whole.’
‘I tried to get it off this morning,’ he confesses, ‘but I couldn’t do it by myself. I knew if I asked Mum or Dad or Bill it’d get straight back to Alice in a flash. They all think it’s bloody hilarious.’
‘Gracious me!’ I stare at the welts on his neck, somewhat daunted (almost as if they aren’t friction burns at all, but tender little love bites). ‘You must really care for her,’ I reason, jolted, ‘to put yourself through all this discomfort just for the sake of not … for the sake of … for a jumper. And such a – I mean I hope you don’t mind my saying so – but such a … a …’
I don’t have the heart to say it out loud.
‘Yes.’ He looks suitably crestfallen at the notion. ‘We’ve been engaged for eight years now. I suppose I must probably feel something.’
(Clifford and Alice, a local milkmaid, were engaged after she proposed to him, in 1976, a leap year, and he was just too kind to say no. At least that was always his version of events. Alice plays the scene quite differently, by all accounts.) I nod. Now it’s my turn to look crestfallen. I decide to take it on the chin, though, and promptly rally. I draw a steadying breath and strengthen my resolve. I know that the worst thing I could possibly do under these particular circumstances would be to offer Clifford any form of assistance.
No. I shan’t. I shall not. I will not – must not, definitely not – offer Clifford Bickerton any kind of help. I must never help Clifford Bickerton, and I must never receive help from Clifford Bickerton.
Oh, but the urge to offer help is so … so natural, so instinctive, so spontaneous, so … so …
No. No! No help, Carla. No offers of help! None.
‘Go and pay for the biscuits,’ I promptly tell him, ‘then pop around to the bungalow. I can’t possibly leave you like this. I have a pair of shears … Uh …’ I pause, scowling. ‘At least I did have a pair of shears …’
‘In the shed?’ he asks, almost tender (I suppose men will feel emotional about outbuildings).
I nod. ‘I do have some kitchen scissors, though,’ I persist.
His face lights up. It lights up. Every pore and auburn whisker is suffused with joy.
No! No, Carla! Bad Carla! Mustn’t. Offer. Help.
Will. Not.
I. Must. Not.
No. Help.
None!
Ten minutes later and he is kneeling on the worn kitchen lino and I am brandishing the scissors in front of him.
‘Sure you’re all right with this?’
‘Yup. Do it.’ He braces himself.
I kneel down beside him and gently slide the bottom blade of the scissors under the right-hand side of the jumper’s collar.
‘Stay very still,’ I instruct him, leaning in closer. It is difficult to find the correct angle and draw the blades together without resting my lower arm and wrist against his leonine neck and cheek. Ah, and there’s that all too familiar ‘Clifford smell’ of candle wax, sleeping puppies and engine grease! A lovely smell. The smell of industry and loyalty and good intent.
‘Your Tikhomirov study of the birches is on the floor,’ Clifford quietly observes.
‘Uh … Sorry?’ I re-focus.
‘Your painting of the birch trees …’ he repeats.
