It was what I was actually thinking as she did it that shocked me. Sorry – I’m running ahead of myself. ‘She’ (aka the Cat’s Mother) aka Mrs Sage Meadows, widow; and what she did: pressing my thudding head into her (perfectly) ample bosom. And what I was actually thinking, meanwhile? I was thinking: Oh our dear Miss Hahn would have a field day with this! I can just imagine her expression. Or her signal lack of expression. Those careful, bleached green eyes with their strange, dark grey surround full of a complete absence of malice which is actually a profound expression of malice. Yes. It’s all in the brows, I suppose. A tiny movement of one brow. Yes. I can just imagine how …
Enough!
It shocked me. As a man. To be thinking about how another woman (Miss Hahn! With her bizarre skin condition and the inked digits scrawled carelessly across her cheek) might register this sudden (not entirely unexpected, but then not entirely expected, either) act of intimacy on the part of another (much better maintained) female.
It’s always been difficult for me to live in the moment. I’m horribly prone to over-analysing everything. Spontaneity isn’t really my strong suit. And this heartfelt embrace (the aforementioned – quite – ample bosom) of Mrs Meadows had taken me somewhat by surprise. Did I lift up my arms (which were glued to my sides) and curl them around her waist (Does Miss Hahn even have a waist? Certainly not one I’ve ever knowingly apprehended)? Did I burrow my nose into the cleft (is it a ‘cleft’? Might the word ‘cleft’ be principally attributable to the partition of a pair of buttocks?)? Or did I simply remain perfectly still, stop breathing through my nose (my nostrils were slightly impaired by the … the intense fleshiness) and commence breathing through my mouth while bearing in mind that it would be completely inappropriate to move my lips excessively or, worse still, drool?
Oh she’s perfectly right – damn that Miss Hahn! – it is a silly name. Sage Meadows. Affected. Ridiculous. And I suppose the gardener was chiefly responsible for that wonderful garden outside. And while I’m on the subject (I am on the subject, aren’t I?) wasn’t Mrs Meadows perhaps slightly – very slightly – over-perfumed? Twixt the aforementioned ‘cleft’ of her quite charming bazooms? Was that a heavy (and rather predictable) dusting of Crabtree and Evelyn Lily of the Valley talcum powder upon her embonpoint? I idly wondered (palms now gently resting on her curvaceous hips) if Miss Hahn has any discernible scent. Something peppery, I’d expect. Something grassy. Warm sand with a slight tinge of sump oil. The kind of smell a piece of crushed kale might exude from under a square-booted heel …
Enough! Enough! Why should I give a fig about Miss Hahn’s smell or what her ridiculously uptight take on this curious little situation might be? I hardly know what my take on it is. Part of me was too embarrassed to object (as her hands moved down to my waist and started fiddling with my belt), part of me was victorious (what red-blooded male wouldn’t be?), part of me suspected that Mrs Meadows might be (i) taking things a little far (for a well-bred female), (ii) taking things a little for granted (complacency is not a quality I am much given to admiring in womankind in general. Treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen has always been my romantic philosophy), (iii) taking advantage of me (of my ‘grief’, even) to further her own mysterious agenda (I have no idea what that might be – and don’t much care to speculate, either).
Another part of me (an opportunistic part, I openly confess) senses that an unexpected increase in intimacy between myself and Mrs Meadows might inch me yet closer (slowly, ineluctably) towards Dr Meadows’s private diaries, which, for the record (whose record?), I no longer actually want or need. Because I’m fully intent on abandoning the Cleary project forthwith.
Or am I? Hmmn. I suppose it might be useful/honest/helpful at this juncture to share the contents (or just the pith, the nub) of a very lengthy telephone call (which was received – due to that pesky time differential – late last night) from Kimberly’s attorney (no less) pertaining to Kimberly’s last will and testament. Or the lack of one. A search of her home had been undertaken (by a greedy niece) and nothing definitive had been discovered. Which meant that I, as her ‘husband’, would be first in line to inherit … to inherit … well, the whole kit and caboodle. Everything. Everything Kimberly. Bills, debts, standing orders, funeral expenses. The house. What remains of her insurance payout. A prospective lawsuit against her useless dentist. The photos. Oh yes, the photos. Please, please don’t let us forget about those.
And how did I respond to this news? Shock! Yes. Complete shock! A swift backhander-across-the-chops – bwuuh! – kind of shock. Then a measure of deep anxiety (not entirely dissimilar, in fact, to how I responded to Mrs Meadows’s legendarily green fingers trespassing upon my fly) followed (quite hard-upon) by … by a gradual sensation of … well, like a gentle defrosting (imagine clutching on to a hot-water bottle but your hands are freezing. At first you are too cold to feel anything and then suddenly this gentle, this profound and incredible feeling of … of extraordinary, comforting, low-level warmth), finally followed by what I can only describe as a sensation of pure, unexpurgated, unadulterated joy. Joy!
JOY!
I was a part of it! I was remembered! I actually mattered (for once)! It was real! It wasn’t just one-sided or in name alone! I was of significance! Yes! I was … I was regarded! Liked! Respected! Included! I was … I was loved!
I WAS LOVED!
AND … AND CHERISHED AND … AND HONOURED!
I WAS TRUSTED!
SHE TRUSTED ME!
STILL! AFTER … AFTER EVERYTHING.
But am I trustworthy? Eh? Wasn’t I fully intending on …? Am I trustworthy? Miss Hahn probably wouldn’t—
Enough!
JUST BREATHE, FRANKLIN! JUST … JUST BREATHE!
This was followed (sixty seconds later) by: ‘Did Kimberly actually want me to inherit? Isn’t it all just a terrible mistake? An almighty screw-up?’
And this, in turn, was then followed (two, three minutes later) by: HAAAAAA! THEY’RE ALL MINE!
MINE!
MINE!
MINE!!!
(Not my greatest moment, I confess.)
Miss Hahn (as an inheritor of property herself) would probably find it difficult to imagine that I hadn’t already pondered this extraordinary eventuality at some considerable length: you know, the will, my inheritance etc. (Good heavens! Was that why she brought over the pie? As a pastry-encrusted negotiating tool?) But I honestly hadn’t – honestly (too sad? Too hungry). And who cares what Miss Hahn thinks anyhow? Ha! The Sea Scouts! Miss Hahn in the Sea Scouts! Absolutely bloody typical! That woman has a rare genius at turning up where she isn’t wanted and then promptly tying everything into knots …
As I ponder Miss Hahn’s tactile dexterity, Mrs Meadows is quietly and methodically relieving me with her hand. I couldn’t say that this was a bolt from the blue – no … – but it certainly wasn’t inked in on my morning’s itinerary. The jury is still out as to whether a bout of somewhat mechanically administered hand-relief is actually an appropriate response to the candid expression of feelings of profound loss, sorrow and grief.
(Okay, so half of the jury are now in, and they’re all lolling around in the box grinning like a bunch of idiots.) Although (I’ll be frank – you deserve that at the very least) the feelings (of sadness etc., that awful, hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach) aren’t nearly so profound now – now that I have been made the chief (fine, the only!) beneficiary of Kimberly’s small estate. I feel light-headed, almost. Yes. Very odd.
Of course silly, frumpy Miss Hahn (newly shelled walnuts, washed gravel, a field mushroom lightly frying in sunflower oil) can have no concept (none!) of what a weight of responsibility this inheritance may ultimately prove to be. I mean there’s Trudy (Kimberly’s mother) to be considered (her declining mental health was the main, contributing factor towards the photos’ publication in the first place). Trudy was always (in my view) quite doolally – completely bats; cranky, dotty, dizzy. An artisan, she turned up at our wedding shoeless, in a home-made goat-skin dress. Followed a strict raw food diet for seventeen years. Hasn’t washed her hair for over two decades (hair is designed to ‘self-clean’, apparently). Thinks coffee is a kind of poison. Once tried to knit a hat for her dog (a basset) out of spider’s webs.
Dear old Trudy.
And now this is all my problem? Now just hang on a second … I have seven recovering drug addicts with their terrifyingly large and touchingly hopeful Catholic families in tow jamming up my workshop in Monterrey, being taught wood-carving, hide tanning and – ha! – life skills by another recovering drug addict called Honesto Soto Salazar (who is anything but), while his loyal wife Juana, my housekeeper, plays her part, training the other wives to hand-weave classic long silk rebozos with their spectacularly tasselled fringes at the far end of my back porch. All these honourable endeavours are supported by an astronomical bank loan (mine, of course).
I suppose I should just sell the house (which Kimberly no longer needs, obviously) and use the proceeds to set up Trudy in a care home (but who would be willing to take her?). Unload those infernal photos to the highest bidder and damn the consequences. This isn’t what Kimberly wanted, no, but then this isn’t what I want. By ‘this’ I mean to be here. Back in England. East Sussex. Rye. Lamb House. The beneficiary of a brief, unasked-for interlude of hand-relief from Mrs Sage Meadows (widow) (poet) (gardener) (chef).
Now I come to ponder it, that breakfast was alarmingly high in iron and protein. Eggs Benedict followed by fried liver, kidney and bacon? One might almost think Mrs Meadows was priming me for something.
I wonder what she stands to gain from this curious transaction? Oh I do hope I don’t … you know … all over my clean suit. Should I pass her the handkerchief in my waistcoat pocket? Or would that be ungallant? The social politics of these situations are quite literally a minefield. A minefield! And she a poor widow! And me a poor widower (come to that)! I need to be immensely sensitive – kind – charitable. This situation wants – needs – demands prodigious levels of tact.
I confess to having had quite mixed feelings about this whole torrid/intimate exchange from the outset. But what was the alternative? A polite rejection? And how to time it? And what to say? And how to maintain eye contact afterwards? And what then the likelihood of tears/bitterness/recriminations/suicidal urges (she calls herself a poet for heaven’s sake!)? She would have been mortified, surely? Utterly mortified (Just wave those fascinating private diaries – which you don’t even want – a quiet toodle-oo, Frankie-boy). I mean to reject her, curtly, brusquely, out of hand. Is that gentlemanly? For it to be made so … so abundantly clear that she’d overstepped the mark? Which she so patently had?! Human decency alone forbids this course.
I suppose Miss Hahn did have a point about the whole ‘I’m moving into Henry James’s old house and therefore my awful poems about bluebells and feelings and lace and chiffchaffs will somehow be magically transformed – transubstantiated (is that an appropriate use?) into Serious Art’ thing. ‘Embarrassing’ (was that the word she used?) is certainly a little harsh. But ‘suspect’? ‘Gauche’? ‘Naive’? ‘Utterly unfounded’?
In terms of our future relationship (Ha! What future relationship?) (To be absolutely brutal) I think I can probably get away with acting as if the entire, curious interlude has been a strange – almost psychedelic – dream. My grief is my shield in this regard. I’m not thinking straight. How could I be? I am vulnerable. Poor Franklin. Poor, dear Franklin. So giving. So open. So kind. So generous. But so … so immensely vulnerable.
If Miss Hahn (damp cardboard, dead starfish) would just … Oops!
Gracious me!
There we go!
Oh, very well managed, Mrs Sage! What a pro!
Uh … Right. Good. Wonderful.
Another cup of your delicious espresso, my dear? Might I possibly … uh … use the bathroom? First door on the right? What an amazing shine on the parquet! Is the panelling original?
Ah. Yes. Uh …
Wasn’t it The Ambassadors he penned here? In this very room, you say? The Golden Bowl? Oh. I must confess to never having got around to …
Lord Give Me Strength! How soon before I can make my excuses and head home?