I had one of my special dreams – could you call it a nightmare? – one of my special, terrible, Orla dreams. It’s been a while now since I’ve dreamed about her. Was it the smell of eucalyptus that set it off? Did it awaken something hidden – suspended – deep within my synapses?
I was at Mulberry Cottage – in my dream – and I was in the garden gathering the fallen leaves from the old tree (the long defunct old mulberry tree). I was raking them up, anxiously. And there was fruit, too. A host of fat, purple berries. They were dropping from the branches overhead. Soft, ripe fruit. And as I gathered the berries up and crammed them into the pockets of my coat, I noticed that my hands were stained – all red. From the juices. And I felt an encroaching sense of panic – a strong resistance. An urge to hide, to flee. Then the fruit started to fall more heavily, like hail. It hit me, like hail. And it left red welts where it landed, but I couldn’t tell – wasn’t certain – whether they were real wounds or just remnants of pulp. It didn’t hurt. There was no pain.
I blinked, in the dream, and I was transported inside the cottage. I was still gathering leaves, on my knees, from the floorboards, but these were eucalyptus leaves, and I was fearful, because I remembered that I am allergic to these leaves, that my hands would blister if they made contact. And so I looked down at my hands. I held out my hands – which only seconds ago had been a vicious shade of puce – and they were clean; healed! A pure, milky white!
Then Orla spoke to me. Orla was there. She was among the leaves. She is the leaves.
‘Gather them up for me, Carla,’ she whispers, her voice just a gentle rustling. ‘Don’t be scared. Gather them up for me, please.’
And she held out her little arms. ‘It is time, meine Carla,’ she says.
‘Watch out for the mulberries!’ I warn her. Because although I’m inside, I’m still afraid of the mulberries, and I can’t be certain they won’t harm her. And I’m right to be afraid, because her skin is suddenly marked by a series of crimson spots – like she’s been peppered by shotgun pellets. But she is still holding out her arms. Her tiny arms. And I can’t lift myself from my knees, I can’t help her. There is nothing I can do to help her. But I can gather up the leaves for her. So I start gathering them together, crying, helplessly, my face a mess of tears and snot. And the more I gather them the more there are. And every time I clear a section, a gust of wind hits the little pile I’ve amassed and sends them flying. I am muttering something under my breath: 4004. Four thousand and four what? Leaves? Yes. 4004. I am counting the leaves; one, two, three, four … Counting the leaves, anxiously. And I need to reach the total, very precise number. 4004. I am muttering it obsessively: ‘4004. Orla’s number.’
I wake up, suddenly, in a cold sweat. 4004! I roll over. 4004! I throw out my arm and feel blindly for a pen or a crayon or a stub of pencil on my bedside table. I am sleepy – clumsy – knock over the alarm clock, almost up-end a glass of water, hear my wristwatch go flying. But I quickly locate a felt-tip and pull off the lid. Paper. Uh …Uh …
I turn, automatically, towards the wall next to my bed, reach out to touch it and prepare to write on it, but there is a poster, one of my new, Russian Propagandist collection, recently hung …
Uh …
4004! I quickly scribble the four digits on to the soft skin inside my arm and then – overwrought, exhausted – lie there, shivering, as the poster (its supporting balls of Blu-Tack disturbed by my blindly grappling hands) suddenly drops from the wall, half on to the floor, half over the bed and sets my heart frantically pounding. Oh God. What did she mean? ‘It is time, meine Carla?’ My skin starts to crawl. I attempt to distract myself by guiltily pondering the apology which I really should have made to Mr Huff – which I fully intended to make – which I really wanted to make – but which I never actually … never actually … somehow … never actually somehow quite got around to … uh …
‘It is time?’
Time for what, exactly?
There just never seemed an appropriate moment. Can there ever be an appropriate moment to gently alert a person to the fact that you knowingly – calculatingly – hid a rotting shark in a suitcase beneath their bed? Out of pure spite? Pure bile? No. No. No. No. Probably not.
I tried to be nice, though, didn’t I? Took the pie? I was full to the brim – bursting! – with good intentions. But the smell of eucalyptus. Orla’s smell. And the way he devoured the thing – slice after slice. Hacked into it with the bread knife. Bolted it down – almost vengefully – like a spiteful baboon cannibalizing the live young of a weaker species, all grabbing hands and gnashing teeth and flashing, bloodshot eyes.
Unsettling.
Poignant.
Unsettling.
What was that other thing she’d said? Orla? About gathering? Gathering the leaves together? The leaves?
Oh why has this all become so complicated?! Why couldn’t we just be … I don’t know … civil? Why all the mischief and the rancour and the game playing? If he’d only just … if he’d just approached me, cordially, from the off, explained himself – the project, in detail.
Yes.
I’d have run a mile.
Oh God!
A mile.
Is it possible – vaguely, even remotely possible – that he wasn’t ever actually interested in my account of events? Like Alys said? That my feelings of guilt may have exacerbated – inflated – my sense of my own significance? I mean it’s not entirely beyond the bounds of …
Is it?
But then didn’t he say he was ‘off the hook’? As if the whole thing had been forced upon him? Against his will? By … by Kimberly, I suppose?
But couldn’t that just be yet another one of his cunning wiles? To befuddle me? To set me off track? To draw me in?
Am I being drawn in?
Oh God.
And now the dream?
If I can just … just … yes. If I can just get rid of him, somehow. Pay for his flight. Ship him off. Return his rent. Yes. If I return his rent surely that’ll help to even things out? Morally? And if he leaves very quickly – packs up and leaves, very quickly (like he says he wants to, like he plans to) – then surely everything can just be quietly … discreetly swept under the carpet? Resolved. Tied up. Finished off. Forgotten about. If I can just … Uh …
Eh?
If I can just … Uh …
Eh?
I awaken, abruptly, in a state of marginal discomfort. What is that? In the bed? I reach down, blindly, and discover the pen – the felt-tip – pressing into my leg. Ow. And I can tell, simply by testing with the pads of my fingers as I extract it, that the lid has come off.
Urgh.
I throw back the sheets and sit up; the fallen poster slithers under the bed. On the wall – where it once hung – are approximately a dozen 4004s, in different sizes, colours, hands. I scowl and look down: good heavens! There are tiny spots of ink everywhere! Everywhere! On my skin, my pyjamas, all over the bed linen! A riot of felt-tip ink! As I register the mess, I straighten the objects on my bedside table – my alarm clock has tipped over, my watch has … And two things strike me in rapid succession: it is one fifty! One fifty! I shake the clock, start looking for my wristwatch to confirm, but it’s fallen behind the headboard and as I reach out to lift the mattress I see that my hands …
Good God! My hands! My hands are all faded! The redness! The chapping! Quite faded! My hands are healing! But instead of a natural sense of joy (awe? Surprise? Gratification?) I feel an awful, dull, thudding sense of … of what? Disappointment? Aversion? Gnawing guilt? Can that be right? Can it? And … and … and it is one fifty! In the afternoon! Yes. And I’d promised to go to the bank to withdraw … to set right … to get rid of …
I throw on some clothes, grab my wallet and my cheque-book, and slam my way out of the house. I jump on to my bike, sprint to the bus-stop, chain it up and then wait for the bus, cursing. I wait for the bus. It finally arrives. I jump on to the bus. It’s almost empty. I sit down, look at my hands, marvel at them (that strange feeling again – in the pit of my stomach). I try and rub off the worst of the felt-tip (spit on an old tissue), but the ink is all but indelible. I curse again. I wipe the sleep out of my eyes and rub my index finger across my teeth. I make some basic financial calculations. We arrive in Rye. I clamber off the bus and sprint for the bank. I arrive at the bank and try the door. The bank is shut. Am I too late? The High Street is virtually empty. Across the road a man is delivering bread from a van to a little teashop. I ask him the time (why might he be delivering bread in the afternoon?). He gives me a curious look then inspects his watch. ‘Ten past seven.’
Ten past seven.
Ten past seven?!
Even the library won’t be open yet! What an idiot! After several minutes of pointless indecision I wander down to the quay and sit there for a while watching the gulls promenading up and down angling for food scraps, the boats bobbing, my healing hands clenched – all the while – into defensive fists, thrust deep, deep inside my pockets.
Please don’t do this to me, Orla! I stamp my feet – perform a little seated tap-dance of anxiety on the tarmac. Yes, I’ve made my mistakes, I’ve been weak – sullen, petulant – but I’ve tried my best to set things straight, so please, please don’t do this to me, Orla! Don’t draw me in again! No more of the pyrotechnics, the miracles, the wonders. Because I’m not a spiritual person, Orla – remember? Not remotely. You know that. I find it hard enough to understand this world – the sticky mess of it, the strangeness – let alone trying to factor in the darkly hollow and woolly hereafter; all those awful consequences beyond awful consequences. No. No. There’s no space in my cramped, lonely little life for faith, for the straitjacket of religion. I’m already a square peg in a round hole: a crazy mishmash, an outsider, conceived in war, born out of misery. I was always – always – a troublesome imposition, a ‘darling mistake’, always dependent on the kindness, the forbearance of others. Nothing was ever unconditional. Or maybe it was, but I never felt like it was. To be so deeply alien and yet not free … never free to … to be as good or as bad as I longed to be. Nothing was ever unconditional. Nothing. Except … well, except your love, Orla, I suppose.
And then I had to go and destroy that.
Inevitably.
Oh Orla – please, please. Can’t you see? There’s barely enough room for me here as it is. It’s all so … so boxed-in, so close and airless, so cramped. Take pity on me! Leave me as I am: quiet, plain, decent (as I possibly can be). Unobtrusive. Repentant. I paid the price, didn’t I? Last time around? And I kept my mouth shut. I made the necessary adjustment. So please, please don’t stir everything up again – just for the sake of it, just because you can – don’t do this to me, Orla!
Urgh.
I shove a stray strand of hair behind my ear and focus – ferociously – on the boats! Yes! The gulls! Yes! But … but here is the evidence, surely? I glance down at my lap. Right here, in my hands. Here is the evidence made concrete in my very flesh. Is this miraculous? I hold the hands out, horrified. No! No! No more miracles! I’ve no time for miracles! Because I’ve learned, from hard experience, that when something is given, then something bigger, something momentous, is also – invariably – extracted. And what else do I honestly have left to give?
A commotion suddenly erupts on the road behind me where a large delivery lorry accidentally reverses into a stationary car (an old Capri). Horns are sounded. Both parties leap out of their vehicles. I quickly stand up and walk off, head down (determined not to get caught up in it).
Yup. That’s what Mame always taught me. Never get involved. Okay, she didn’t teach it so much by word as by the worst possible example. Fearless Mame! Always at the heart of any commotion, with her red lips (spewing a constant stream of peerless vowels and brutal consonants), her impeccable blonde curls, her neat little suits and pristine gloves. Mame’s gloves! That was the formal face. And the informal? Equally pristine, but tough. Those same, perfectly manicured fingers would wring a chicken’s neck, shoot a rabbit, disembowel a deer, mend a radio, fix a lawnmower, paint a house, grab a hammer and build a shed. Fearless Mame! Pitiless Mame! Indomitable! Irresistible! Implacable Mame. With her passion for the rules and her unutterable horror of encroachment!
It sometimes felt – and this was the unsayable, the truly unthinkable – as though she was determined to dedicate the rest of her life (after my disgusting conception) to making up for that one, terrible occasion on which she simply could not say no. Storming into battle at the slightest provocation. Searching out trouble. Routing all – any – opposition. Righteous. Opinionated. Hungry for justice. But at what cost? And for whom, precisely? Herself? Me? Us?
But where was I, meanwhile? Where’s cripplingly shy and unassuming, little Carla to be found? Quiet, little Carla? Hiding among Mame’s skirts? Cringing behind the sofa? Fleeing on her bike? Skimming stones on the beach? Perpetually ducking? Perpetually wincing? Standing at her shoulder, mesmerized, as she sits at her old dressing table, carefully applying her lipstick, her ‘warpaint’ – a special red, Mame’s red – before grabbing her purse and marching out? Oh God, just wishing she sounded a little more like the other mothers! Wishing she could act a little more like the other mothers! Be normal, Mame! Why did she always have to be so brave? So proud? So exceptional? So confident? So straight? So practical? So extraordinary? So unbowed?
Is that how she ended up with poor, old Tatteh? Out of sheer contrariness? Just kicking against the pricks? Out of habit? Always different. Always difficult. Engaged to a Jew? A shiftless musician? A piano tuner? In wartime Berlin? Was it simple bloody-mindedness? Or was it … was it actually heroic? Noble Mame!
Fearless Mame!
How different they were. Mame so unflinching. Tatteh so careless. So jolly! So … so deliriously selfish.
Was that me? Did I do that to them? Or was it simply the war? Was what happened his fault – pure cowardice – for getting out when he could, abandoning her, his darling fiancée? Or was it hers: cancelling the wedding, staying behind – out of sheer necessity, she insisted – to support her consumptive younger brother, just sent home, broken, raving, from the front?
My mind suddenly switches back to the dream. Orla’s dream. Aren’t objects in dreams always something other than how they appear? So the tree? That old mulberry tree? How long since I’ve thought of it? Does it represent the past? Does it represent me? My fear? Or … or my Mame, perhaps? The red, remember? Mame’s red?
I consider the actual tree – the old mulberry. I remember gathering fruit from it as a child. Miss Vaughn (Hungarian by birth), who owned the tree back then, was best friends with Mame – Mame’s only friend so far as I can remember. She’d lay out a sheet and then shake the branches. The fruit would come raining down. Mame made jam, cordial, syrup, curd, cobbler, custard, dumplings, sorbet, pikelets. She even glazed the odd chicken and rabbit.
When did that old tree finally die? I don’t remember.
Was the tree still fruiting when the Clearys came to stay?
Wasn’t it already dead by then?
Still, I don’t remember.
But the hands …
‘It is time, meine Carla.’
I find myself standing outside a nearby café. I enter, order a poached egg on toast and a pot of tea at the counter, grab some cutlery and a paper napkin, then sit at a table by the window and gaze out at the quay from this new, slightly more obtuse angle, until the waitress brings me my cup and teapot. I pour out my tea (don’t look at the hands! Don’t focus on the hands!). It’s in one of those squat, familiar, stainless-steel pots (typical of rough and ready catering establishments) and as I lift it to pour I inadvertently catch sight of my reflection in its silver-angled surfaces.
Eh?
I stop pouring, alarmed, and adjust the pot to try and see my cheek in it. Is that …? Ow! A little stream of tea pours out of the full pot and on to my lap. Ow ow! I put the pot down and dab at my trousers with my serviette, then grab my knife and try to see my reflection in it. Useless. Back of a fork. Nope. Teaspoon …?
Uh …? Is that …? I throw down the teaspoon and angle my cheek towards the windowpane. There’s a light on overhead, so perhaps if I …? If I …?
Good heavens! Is that …? Is that a large, black felt-tip mark right across my left cheek? But … but how the heck …?
Argh! Of course! The numbers on my arm! I push up my sleeve. There they are – the four numbers – slightly blurry now. I must’ve slept with my cheek resting against them at some point! And now there’s a giant, black, back-to-front …
I grab the damp serviette and start rubbing away at the mark, focusing very hard, trying to …
Eh?
I de-focus with a slight jump. Someone is … no, no, not someone, Mr Huff – MR FRANKLIN D. HUFF! – is standing at the other side of the window peering in at me! He lowers his knuckle. He has just knocked on the window.
What? No! Why? Why? Why? Why Mr Huff? Why here? I cover my cheek, mortified, as Mr Huff stalks towards the door and enters.
‘I’ve been standing at the other side of that windowpane for several minutes, Miss Hahn,’ he chronically exaggerates. ‘What on earth are you up to? What is that?’ He points. ‘On your cheek?’
I drop my hand from my face.
‘What is that?’ he repeats, drawing closer. ‘Are they digits?’
I nod.
The waitress brings over my poached egg and places it down, looking at Mr Huff enquiringly.
‘Flying visit,’ Mr Huff informs her, with a flap of his ludicrously skinny grey-suited arms.
He then pulls out a chair and sits down.
‘Feeling a little better this morning?’ I ask.
‘I think that pie might’ve been slightly off,’ he confides.
‘The pie was perfectly fresh,’ I snap. ‘I ate a slice myself – remember? – and have been absolutely fine.’
‘I have a ludicrously delicate constitution,’ Mr Huff sighs, ‘very sensitive.’
‘Like a girl’s,’ I mutter.
‘4004,’ he reads, eyes slitting, mystified.
‘A delicate constitution hardly tallies with your reputation as an international jet-setter,’ I murmur.
‘Well observed,’ he concedes. ‘It’s my Achilles heel,’ he continues. ‘I feel things through my stomach – stress, unpleasant emotions. It’s a nervous thing. And yes – I openly confess – it’s perfectly risible in an adult male.’
I am signally nonplussed by this sudden show of humility on Mr Huff’s part – this unexpected show of vulnerability. Chiefly because I don’t want to share personal details with this man. I don’t want intimacy. I can’t afford for Mr Huff to become dimensional. That would be difficult – uncomfortable. I gaze over at him, perplexed.
Bad stomach aside, he seems to be in a state of high good humour; his face is shining, as if he’s delighted by something (my patent unease, perhaps?). It’s almost as if a great – an unendurable – weight has suddenly been lifted from his stupidly puny grey-suited shoulders.
‘Did you come into Rye on foot?’ I wonder, suspicious – almost jealous – picking up my knife and fork.
‘I found the rabbit sitting in a colander,’ he says, eyeing my plate. ‘Last night. It seemed a rather strange place to …’
‘I didn’t put it in a colander,’ I say (I did put it in a colander. It was that or the washing-up basin which was choc-full of dirty crockery).
‘Your friend, Pemberton, had set up a nice little home for it in an old sewing-machine cover.’
‘Bickerton.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Bickerton. Clifford Bickerton.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And the sewing-machine cover has a certain sentimental value.’
‘Really?’ Mr Huff’s eyes widen.
‘Yes. It belonged to the cottage’s former owner, Miss Vaughn.’
‘Oh.’
I pour myself some tea.
‘Sentimental value,’ he muses (almost under his breath).
I don’t respond. It was petty of me to object, I know. But that rabbit (as I explained to it, at length, in person, last night) is a tiny, unwelcome impostor at Mulberry. Just like Mr Huff.
‘Turns out your pal Bickerton was resident in the area way back when the Clearys were hereabouts,’ Mr Huff informs me (as if this will be breaking news to me). ‘At least that’s what he claims.’
‘Clifford is a local,’ I confirm as Mr Huff’s hand snakes out and purloins a half-slice of my toast. ‘He and I were at school together.’
‘Huge!’ Mr Huff exclaims, taking a bite.
‘Yes.’ I scowl (the impudence!). ‘Very tall.’
‘And possibly a little unstable,’ Mr Huff continues (on finishing his mouthful).
‘Clifford?’ I snort. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Clifford’s ridiculously stable – trustworthy, reliable – almost to a fault.’
Mr Huff takes another bite of the toast, grimaces then points at my cheek. ‘It looks very odd,’ he says.
I rub at it, reddening.
‘4.0.0.4,’ he re-reads, then, ‘Gracious me! Just look at your hands!’
I glance down at my hands. My hands seem to be improving in texture and colour with virtually every passing second.
‘What brings you to Rye so early?’ I ask.
‘Why are you changing the subject?’ he responds.
‘Am I?’
‘Yes. You seem very … very shifty this morning. Quite ill at ease.’
‘Shifty,’ I echo.
‘I’ve been invited out to breakfast,’ he swiftly moves on.
‘Really? Where?’
‘With a woman called Sage Meadows.’ He finishes off his slice. ‘She’s the widow of a local doctor.’
‘Dr Meadows.’ I nod, eyes slitting. ‘Of course.’
‘Ah, so you’re familiar with Mrs Meadows?’
It irritates me in the extreme the way he automatically presumes that I have no social circle in the area. He’s been here for a matter of weeks. I’ve lived here my entire life! It’s so patronizing! Do I know Mrs Meadows? Do I know Mrs Meadows? This is the sort of thing a person simply shouldn’t need to say – or to ask. It should be … It should be patently obvious.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Not personally. I knew Dr Meadows though, of course. And I know of her. I mean I know her by sight. I must confess that I’ve always thought her name a little … ridiculous.’
What I don’t say is that I’ve always thought her a little ridiculous, too. Full of herself. Stuck-up.
‘A redhead.’ He nods. ‘Beautifully groomed. Got a first-class honours degree in English and Philosophy from Durham University. Lives up in Henry James’s old house. Aspirant poet. Has an amazing walled garden – the most lovely in Rye, I’m told. It’s won awards. Classic borders bursting with elegant white annuals. She’s very green-fingered by all accounts.’
‘The gardens are beautiful,’ I concede, ‘although I believe some of the credit must go to the full-time gardener, Richard Stanley. Dick and I were in the Sea Scouts together.’
‘Girls aren’t permitted in the Sea Scouts!’ Mr Huff barks.
‘My mother made a deal with the head of the local troop.’ I shrug.
‘Ah, the legendary Else Hahn.’ Mr Huff smirks. ‘The bête noire of local squatters, I’m told. Punctilious and unbending to the point of pure insanity in her application of local planning laws.’
‘I was officially there as “cook”.’ I glower.
‘Sage has no inkling of your identity,’ Mr Huff confides. ‘I suppose that’s to be expected,’ he adds, idly, ‘with the generational difference.’
‘Generational?’ I echo, bemused.
‘I concede that the name is a little twee.’ He grins.
He grins. Yes, he grins. Mr Huff grins. At me. And while I’m still confused about what it is that he’s saying, exactly (‘generational difference’? And … and how exactly did he get to be so well-informed about my beautiful Mame? Alys? Mrs Barrow?), I’m struck – yes, struck – by how very handsome he is when he smiles. It’s not the teeth. Although the teeth are fine – for a smoker. The teeth are good enough. But something in the jaw, the cheekbones. A fine-ness. A fragility. And the eyes: a wide-spaced hazel behind his little wire-rimmed spectacles. Warm. Shy. Humourful. And the delicacy of his features conjoined with the light, careless tangle of pale, brown curls which hang across his forehead, around his ears …
A different generation?!
‘Is this meeting connected to the book?’ I wonder, and then before he can respond: ‘Because I thought you’d already made up your mind to abandon all—’
‘Not that it’s any of your affair,’ Mr Huff interjects drolly, ‘but I took Mrs Meadows out for lunch at the Mermaid when I first arrived in the area. The food was execrable, but we got on terribly well. She promised to show me around Lamb House on a reciprocal date but then was suddenly obliged to journey up to Coventry for a few weeks to assist her younger sister in launching her latest venture: a butterfly farm – a kind of zoo for exotic butterflies. The sister’s quite the impresario, it seems.’
Yes. Mrs Meadows is very well preserved. I openly concede the point (to myself). But a different generation? I honestly can’t imagine that there’s more than a couple of years in it.
‘She apparently had an infestation of ants in her larval rearing house,’ Mr Huff continues. ‘Ants always pose a serious threat to the larvae. She panicked. And Sage flew to the rescue.’
‘Hurrah for Sage!’ I cheer.
Mr Huff lets this pass. ‘I’d pondered setting up a butterfly farm in Monterrey at one stage,’ he continues, ‘so we naturally had a very fruitful exchange on the subject.’
‘I don’t know why,’ I murmur, ‘but I’ve always thought it a little embarrassing the way …’
I peter out.
He honestly thinks I look older than Sage Meadows? With her awful, static hair and her green eye shadow and her brittle laugh? Not just older – of a ‘different generation’?! I mean how many years are there between generations? Five? Ten? Sixteen?
‘The way what?’ Mr Huff demands.
‘Sorry?’ I blink.
‘You said you always thought it a little embarrassing the way …’ he rotates a graceful hand.
‘Oh. Yes. The way aspirant writers seem to think that simply by living in the former home of another successful writer their allure will somehow, miraculously, rub off.’
‘Surely it’s just a matter of aesthetics?’ Mr Huff snaps, plainly riled. ‘Sensitive writerly eyes are naturally charmed by the same qualities in a home: the layout, the seclusion, the sense of quiet …’
‘Possibly.’ I shrug.
Hang on, though … Hang on. Shelf the negativity for a moment, Carla. Maybe he thinks Sage is of an older generation? Dryer, fustier, careworn? It makes a strange kind of … Can he mean that? I furtively glance over.
No.
No.
He is staring at my cheek again.
‘Are they fours, or are they little, primitive crosses with a diagonal line going from the top to the—’
‘Charming as the widow Sage undoubtedly is,’ I quickly interrupt, ‘I’m hazarding a guess that it was her former connection to Dr Meadows that initially drew you to her.’
‘I hear Dr Meadows kept extensive private diaries,’ he twinkles (infuriatingly).
‘And did Mrs Meadows show you the diaries?’ I wonder.
‘Nope.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I didn’t presume to ask, Miss Hahn.’
He checks his watch and then reaches for his jacket. Did he take off his jacket? I have no memory of that. But I like his cream shirt and his thin tweed tie and his old-fashioned corduroy waistcoat. I suppose – to all intents and purposes – he’s quite dressed up.
‘Well I’d hate to keep you.’ I smile.
‘I got a lift in with Mr Barrow.’ Mr Huff casually returns to one of my earlier enquiries. ‘An interesting man. No conversation. Watery eyes. Like he’s always teetering on the verge of bursting into tears.’
‘I’ve always felt as though Mr Barrow’s superficially unprepossessing exterior actually conceals hidden depths,’ I murmur. ‘Like he’s … I don’t know … an old soul.’
I have no idea why I feel this (there’s no physical or anecdotal evidence), but I always have.
‘Really?’ Mr Huff demands.
I nod.
‘Because I’ve often found myself thinking the exact same thing!’ he announces, apparently utterly astonished by the parity in our thinking.
‘Oh,’ I say.
Just ‘Oh.’
‘I do believe that’s the first subject we’ve ever actually agreed upon, Miss Hahn!’ he exclaims, rising to his feet.
I desperately try and think of another (another thing we’ve agreed upon), but I can’t. No. There’s nothing. Simply nothing.
‘That’s very possibly true,’ I grudgingly concede.
‘And there’s number two!’ Mr Huff holds up his arms in a gesture of sporting celebration. ‘We’re on a roll, Miss Hahn! Dios de ni Vida!’
Then off he saunters.
Urgh. I stab into the yolk of my poached egg with my fork. So irritating. So … so irritating. He is. Him. That awful man. That awful, awful man. Mr Huff.