Miss Hahn arrives, unannounced, one hand swaddled in a white(ish) cloth, bearing a large pork pie. I am sitting on the front porch, knitting her a pair of socks. It’s been months since I’ve felt like getting my needles out.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were married to Kimberly Couzens?’ she demands. ‘That changes everything.’
‘Does it?’ I ask. I mean, forgive me for being a tad haughty and suspicious, but she’s still the same Carla Hahn who cuts her own hair, has an extraordinarily overweight dog, cries openly on the beach, dresses like a tramp. And lies about her mother’s cat’s age (please God, let’s not forget about that!).
‘Of course!’ She nods. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It means you’re one of us.’
One of us?
‘I suppose you intend that as a kind of compliment,’ I murmur.
‘I brought you a pork pie.’ She smiles. Ah. She gets my sense of humour! Well that’s refreshing. People sometimes struggle with it. I struggle with it myself, on occasion. Hmmn. Was I actually being funny, though? Or was I simply being rude? I must confess that there is something about our dear Miss Hahn that brings out the spiteful in me, poor creature. Should I mention at this juncture that her ex-partner is a giant, delusional maniac? Or that I hate pork pies because of an infantile terror of the layer of aspic?
It’s a magnificent-looking pie, admittedly. And I’m all but starving. I put down my knitting, take the pie from her and transport it through to the kitchen.
‘If only you’d been straight with me from the very start – phoned me, sent me a letter – this all could’ve been so different,’ she persists.
Is she actually being sincere? If I’d sent her a letter?! Nah. I’m not convinced.
‘I can’t stay long …’ she adds, sniffing the air, anxiously. ‘There’s a very strong smell of eucalyptus …’
Ah yes, the much-touted disinfectant allergy!
She frowns and clears her throat, almost nervous, as if preparing herself for something, then sneezes, twice. ‘Do you smell it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Eucalyptus.’
‘Nope,’ I lie.
I place the pie on to the breadboard and take out the bread knife.
‘That isn’t the proper board for meats,’ she says.
‘This isn’t meat,’ I answer. ‘It’s pastry. It’s a pie.’
‘A pie containing meat,’ she corrects me. ‘A meat pie.’
I cut into the pie, nonetheless. She winces.
‘Your rules about cutting boards in the Welcome Pack are certainly voluminous,’ I say (keen for her to know that I am aware of the rules; in fact I recall that there are almost two whole pages on this subject in the aforementioned tome. Nothing – nothing – not so much as a paltry line, about the temperamental toilet flush).
‘Jewish/German heritage.’ She shrugs. ‘And I’m a trained nurse. I did an entire nodule on basic food hygiene.’
An entire nodule?!
‘I believe the fall of the Holy Roman Empire ultimately hinged on a badly prepared prawn,’ I quip.
‘I’m very sorry she’s dead, Mr Huff,’ Miss Hahn murmurs.
I pull out a slice of pie and notice that there is hardly any aspic in it at all. My hunger is suddenly quite overwhelming. I forgo the luxury of a plate and take a bite. It is delicious. It is utterly delicious. It is the most … the most … the most succulent, flavourful, rich, moist, sweetly porky …
I idly notice that Miss Hahn is watching me with an expression akin to alarm. Some time has passed, but I couldn’t say how much exactly.
‘You seem alarmed, Miss Hahn,’ I note.
‘How long since your last square meal?’ she asks.
‘Three days,’ I say, ‘four days.’
‘Pace yourself,’ she suggests.
I help myself to a second, larger slice (almost on principle, I suppose).
‘Was it very sudden?’ she wonders.
‘No. I just gradually ran out of money, over time. I ate less and less. Then finally I stopped eating altogether. Starvation generally follows a fairly predictable arc, I find.’
‘Well there’s still stuff on the allotment,’ she gently chides.
I don’t respond. A handful of blackening chard? Three soggy leeks?
‘There was something so … so terrifyingly competent about her,’ she continues, gently adjusting the ‘bandage’ around her thumb (Are we actually talking to each other here, I wonder? I glance over my shoulder, just to make sure. Yup. Only us). ‘I mean nothing ever seemed to faze her.’ She grins, remembering. ‘She was prepared for every eventuality. So able. So experienced. I never saw her in any colour other than black. But everything spotless. It was so intimidating. That shock of white-blonde hair and that amazingly luminous …’
She is going to say ‘skin’, but she stops herself just in time.
I start a third slice.
‘Sorry,’ she says, gathering up a little chunk of pastry that has fallen on to the floorboards, before shoving it, unthinkingly, into her pocket, ‘that was …’
Tactless?
Yes. Yes it was.
‘Kimberly suffered 78 per cent burns,’ I say, through a giant mouthful. ‘People rarely survive with even a fraction of that percentage. But there was a South African doctor working at the hospital she was taken to in Derry. He was a burns specialist and a plastic surgeon. He shouldn’t have been there – I won’t bore you with the details …’ (Or myself, for that matter.)
I cut another slice. ‘I mean he was meant to be in Singapore. He was on a lecture tour. But then the toddler of the couple he was B&B-ing with ate two pages of his passport. And Kimberly shouldn’t have been there, either, come to that; her flight had been cancelled the day before. The ambulance driver suffered a seizure and the assistant driver who took over the wheel – and received a formal warning, after the fact, for his trouble – got lost. But if she’d …’
I pause. It’s such a convoluted story. Yet Miss Hahn seems rapt.
‘We worked out afterwards that there were approximately twelve or thirteen coincidences which all led, en masse, to her ultimate survival. If any one of them hadn’t taken place …’ I pause. ‘All these strange coincidences – a comedy of errors, one after the other. We often laughed about it.’
‘What a beautiful story,’ she says, somewhat fatuously, as I cut my fifth slice. ‘And what a sad story,’ she adds, carefully, as an afterthought.
‘She survived another twelve years,’ I say.
Was it twelve years? Suddenly that doesn’t seem very long at all.
‘She survived for a reason.’ Miss Hahn nods.
‘And every day – every day – she wished that she hadn’t,’ I continue. ‘Every day she wished she’d just died in that fire. Every day she cried – with the sheer frustration of it all. I mean the pain she was in. She was virtually blind. This incredible … inconvenience; the sheer … sheer effort … the laboriousness of a life with severe burns. The infections. The ulceration. Some of the scars never fully healed. On those pressure-points of the body: the elbows, the buttocks …’
I gaze down at the pink pork-meat, then over at Miss Hahn’s crimson hands. Miss Hahn is also gazing down at her hands.
‘And when people say things like … like … “She survived for a reason” …’ I throw out my arm and another small chunk of pastry ricochets off the hood of the oven (Miss Hahn goes to retrieve it). ‘For a reason! I just think – no harm intended, of course – I just think: You misguided bloody idiot, you cliché-toting well-meaning but misguided bloody idiot. You sanctimonious fool. You moron. I mean how dare you simply presume to …’
I run out of words, so I finish my slice of pie and then hack off another chunk. I eat this one, too.
Miss Hahn says nothing. After a minute or so she cuts herself a thin slice of pie and carries it through to the little sitting room. She stands by the window and peers out of it as she eats. I wonder what it is that she’s staring at out there. A cat regally defecating down by the cut? A bus disgorging its occupants over on the main road? The black shadow of a giant tanker on the far horizon? I suddenly feel a slight pang of … what? Guilt? Empathy? Nausea?
‘That was good,’ she finally observes, brightly, on completing her last mouthful. ‘So what about the book?’
‘The book?’
The book?! Is this any time to be talking about books?
‘Well I guess I’m off the hook.’ I shrug.
‘Oh – you were on a hook?’ She looks surprised. ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘Yes. No. Uh.’
Arrgh. You know what? I wish I could just … I wish I could just put all these feelings I have inside me – this mass of tiny peppery black dots which march around in my stomach, behind my eyelids, over my shoulders, like … like ants – into coherent sentences. I wish I could just print them out on to clean, little slips of paper – in neat, densely printed lines – like a till receipt. Then take that damn receipt, screw it up and throw it into a wastepaper basket. Dispose of it. Dispose of them. Responsibly. Then calmly move on (machismo – pride – still abundantly intact). Yes. I wish I could just … I wish I could just stop saying things and doing things and then not knowing why I did them or why I said them. Or knowing really – underneath – and wishing that I didn’t. Yes. Wishing I could just graciously accept what I know. But I can’t. Because what would be left of me, then? How might I be expected to drag myself out of bed in the morning? Look in the mirror? Blanch? Look again? Pluck the odd stray hair from inside my nostril? Apply shaving foam?
‘Will you be returning home for the funeral?’
Miss Hahn has returned to the kitchen again. I find her gaze very intimidating, all of a sudden.
‘Kim lived in Canada. My flight was to Monterrey.’
‘You couldn’t change it?’
I just … I just wish I could be slightly more in control of this entire … I wish I was more in control of my entire wretched, tilting, wonky self. If only my feelings – my impulses – my actions were an orchestra which I – me – was able to conduct. They are an orchestra, to all intents and purposes – but my conducting? A disaster! Chaos! A deafening cacophony! Horns parping! The percussionist rolling around on his back, legs in the air, having a riot on the maracas! Violas being plucked by teeth instead of fingers! A chronic excess of flugelhorn!
‘You couldn’t change it?’
Because I honestly don’t know – really and truly – I don’t know why I was knitting her those socks. Why? When I think about it – logically – my having succumbed to this silly impulse – this improbably tender urge – I just … I’m just bewildered. Yes! Bemused. Nonplussed. Are they even for her? The socks? The three paltry rows so far completed? These non-socks? These ‘idea of socks’? These ‘contended’ pieces of un-knitwear?
Is it guilt? Over the satsuma incident? And if it is, then why am I behaving so objectionably now, when she’s so kindly brought me over a conciliatory pie? A Pie of Peace? Eh?
‘Maybe I could help? If it’s the money? I could refund you the rent you paid …’
No. No. I don’t know why I agreed to write the damn book! Or maybe I do. To get my own back. On them. On our dear Miss Hahn here with all her disgustingly kind suggestions. On … on Kimberly, even? By scapegoating Bran Cleary (an arch-seducer! An adulterer! A political neophyte! And artist for heaven’s sake!) and then diminishing my own humiliation? But I was already humiliated – wasn’t I? My reputation in shreds? After Tlateloco? After I got it all so wrong? And the dalliance with Win Scott? The way I trusted him to a fault. Not just once, but twice! Twice! The way he drew me in? Led me on?
‘I was planning to refund it anyway, I mean after I found out …’
Oh God I don’t know why Kim and I were never divorced. Or maybe I do know: she was my shield, my excuse – but for what? No. I don’t want to think about it. I just … I just …
‘It seems like the right thing to do.’
I don’t understand why the import/export business won’t really take off. Why can’t I make it work? Because I’m not an importer/exporter, I suppose, not a businessman, just a journalist. A discredited journalist! A laughing stock. And only Kimberly truly understood. The subtle pressures. The necessary compromises. The gentle log-rolling. Only Kimberly …
‘I’ll go into Rye and withdraw it from the bank. First thing in the morning.’
But there are plenty of people – plenty of expats – in Mexico in desperate need of reliable supplies of Robinson’s Barley Water, and Marmite and Colman’s Mustard and Oxo Cubes and Bird’s Custard Powder and Lyle’s Golden Syrup and McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits – a choice of plain, milk or dark chocolate (just tick relevant box).
There are plenty of blathering idiots. Moronic expats. Plenty of them.
Miss Hahn is speaking again. Kind Miss Hahn. Helpful Miss Hahn. I turn – without answering – and trot (like a little pony) through to the bathroom. As I do this I play back in my mind what she’s just said and realize that it’s: ‘Mr Huff, you’re a pale shade of green. You are going to be sick. Don’t use the toilet. It’ll block. There’s a perfectly good bucket here – there – under the sink.’
Later, hanging over the toilet bowl, exhausted – I don’t want your damn money, woman! You castrating bitch! Not a penny of it! – I hear her in conversation with the rabbit. If the rabbit responds – as I’m sure that it will, that it must – its replies are tragically indecipherable (to my ears at least).