It took the best part of an entire afternoon to salvage what I could from the bungalow, which in the broad light of day looked as if some cruel deity had just laid into it, willy-nilly, with a huge jackhammer. Or a monstrous shark had leapt from the sea’s depths and bitten a big chunk away. Or a passing giant had paused for a brief interlude during a beachside stroll, rested his elbow – unthinkingly – on the roof, gazed out to sea and debated whether or not to risk the short wade across to France.
There seemed no rhyme or reason to what was lost and what still remained: an untouched supper of sardines on toast, resting (knife and fork casually crossed across the plate) on half a kitchen counter, my copy of Andromeda lying open on the bedroom floor at the very page I left off reading it, but my bed – in which I happily lay to do so – and the wall the bed generally leaned up against, now mysteriously evaporated.
If I gazed down at the new rows of jagged mud and rubble terraces, I could see rugs and torn posters and incidental tables and the spare Baby Belling and the old lawnmower and my best bedspread (the old blue one with the rose pattern) poking out from the murky scree. There was the horrible avocado-coloured china bath and its matching hand-basin lying far below on the beach, the toilet (which completed the suite) and the ugly hammered-copper chimney-breast cover (from the living room) hovering twenty foot above. There was a door – still vertical and in its frame – repeatedly opening and closing in the wind, as if a series of ghostly inhabitants were appraising the suitability of this strangely airy new residence before retreating, unconvinced.
I packed up what I could. It almost seemed a kind of … a sort of betrayal not to clamber down the slope and retrieve what lay just beyond reach (my best teapot, a bottle of good shampoo, a collection of tape cassettes …) and then another kind (if not of betrayal, then a small defeat) to carefully pack up an egg timer that had never worked, a painting of Camber Castle that I had been given by an old neighbour and had always secretly loathed, a rusty frying pan – the trusty little Le Creuset I inherited from my mother now apparently gone for good.
Ross and Marian Seaton and their grown-up son Jeremy – from around the corner – helped me pile up their old Land-Rover and we drove three full loads over to Shimmy’s. Marian had kindly prepared a flask of tea and a round of ham and egg sandwiches which we ate on what remained of the front lawn. She asked if she might take some of the plants from the garden. There was an old honeysuckle she had always admired and a small jasmine and a wonderfully florid pink English tea rose.
Some of the stuff went into Shimmy’s front parlour, some into a shed, but we were obliged to take the final load (mainly Tilda’s stuff) over to Mulberry and store it, temporarily, in the air-raid shelter. This wasn’t an easy task: access to Mulberry isn’t generally good, and there were still quite a number of vans parked illegally on the lane, oh … and a succession of overexcited children running about, several of whom were baiting poor Joyce – Mrs Seelinger’s spaniel – (they’d dressed him up in an old yellow cardigan and had tied a blue hydrangea flower to his tail; heaven only knows whose garden they’d acquired it from) and so they had to be quickly apprehended (Mrs Seaton – a former tree surgeon, who can be quite terrifying on her day – undertook this mission) and then strictly reprimanded.
It was heavy work, and a warm afternoon, and Mr Seaton, Jeremy and I were just in the midst of working out the appropriate angles at which to manoeuvre an especially large and unwieldy dresser through the two tiny doorways when our calculations were disrupted by a series of strange creaks and thuds (interspersed with a succession of loud and quite dreadful hiccups).
It was Mr Huff, of course – who else? – struggling manfully down the garden path, barefoot, on a pair of (actually rather fine, if not entirely functional) old brown-leather-padded wooden crutches. He was wearing his pyjamas. His glasses were on askew and his hair was all lopsided.
‘Miss Hahn! Hic! What is this? Hic!’ he demanded, lifting an irate crutch to gesticulate.
The Mr Seatons promptly put down the dresser. On my foot.
‘It’s a dresser, Mr Huff, from the bungalow …’ I tried – and failed – to remove my foot. ‘It belongs to …’ I paused. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Seaton, but you’ve placed the dresser down on to my …’
The two Mr Seatons quickly lifted the dresser again and I slid the bruised digit out from beneath it. Mr Huff watched on, impassively, still hiccuping.
‘Have you tried taking a deep breath?’ Ross Seaton wondered.
‘Sorry?’ Mr Huff glared at him.
‘A deep breath. Have you tried holding your breath? Carbon dioxide kept for any kind of extended duration inside your lungs automatically releases your diaphragm.’
(Mr Seaton was once a science teacher.)
‘Of course I’ve hic! tried holding my hic! breath!’ Mr Huff snorted.
‘How long have you been hiccuping?’ Jeremy Seaton enquired.
‘Six or hic! seven hours hic!’ Mr Huff answered, scowling.
‘My grandmother once hiccuped for twelve days.’ Jeremy shrugged.
Mr Huff looked impressed, in spite of himself.
‘Then she dropped dead,’ Jeremy added.
‘Exhaustion.’ Ross nodded. ‘But she was eighty-five and suffered from severe angina.’
‘Shimmy often gets hiccups,’ I volunteered, ‘and I generally get him to sip on a glass of water.’
‘Eight or nine quick little gulps in a row,’ Ross concurred, ‘so the rhythmic contractions of the oesophagus override the spasms in the diaphragm.’
‘That was hic! the first hic! thing I tried hic!’ Mr Huff confessed.
At this point, Mrs Seaton arrived (Joyce in tow). She instantly assessed the situation.
‘Have you tried pushing your right thumb into your left palm and then pressing the palm really hard?’ she wondered.
Mr hic! Huff hic! instantly hic! attempted to hic! follow hic! her instructions.
‘No, not …’ Mrs Seaton (dissatisfied with his technique) strode over to him, grabbed his hand and showed him exactly what to do.
‘Now press really hard for about ten seconds.’
Mr Huff tried his best to oblige her. He looked ashen, painfully thin and seemed quite unsteady on his feet. My heart – in spite of itself – went out to him.
Alas, Mrs Seaton’s hic! technique hic! didn’t quite work on Mr Huff. Hic! Mrs Seaton hic! was nonplussed. ‘That always gets rid of mine.’ She shrugged, then, after a pause: ‘Did you know you’ve got some kind of pinky-orange liquid splashed all across your cheek?’
Mr Huff scowled and put up his hand to feel his face.
‘No. Over there …’
Mrs Seaton indicated with her finger. Mr Huff tried, once again, to hic! locate it, but failed. Mrs Seaton quickly lost patience with him, pushed her hand into her trouser pocket, withdrew a tissue, spat on it and applied it to Mr Huff’s hic! cheek.
I tried to repress a smile. This wasn’t lost on Mr Huff.
‘I’m glad you hic! seem to find hic! such evident hic! delight in my hic! various misfor – hic! – tunes Miss hic! Hahn!’ he hissed.
‘Stick your fingers in your ears for twenty seconds,’ I suggested.
‘Why? hic!’ Mr Huff demanded, paranoid. ‘So you hic! can all hic! make hic! fun of me hic! on the hic! sly?!’
‘Better still, apply steady pressure to the soft areas behind your earlobes,’ Ross Seaton added, ‘just below the base of the skull; that’ll send a powerful relax signal via the vagus nerve to the diaphragm.’
As Mr Huff (quite obligingly, I felt) started to lift his hands to his ears, one of his crutches became dislodged from beneath his armpit and clattered down on to the path. I ran over to retrieve it.
‘I would strongly advocate combining pressing your ears with sipping water rhythmically through a straw,’ Mrs Seaton suggested, ‘which naturally doubles your chances of success.’
The two Seaton men – after a brief discussion – lifted up the dresser again and recommenced their attempt to gain access to the bomb shelter. Mrs Seaton quickly trotted off to oversee this process.
I passed Mr Huff his crutch. We stared at each other, and I felt a sudden, overwhelming feeling of self-consciousness. Then Mr Huff hiccuped.
‘My mother always used to get me to stick out my tongue,’ I said.
‘Sorry? Hic!’ Mr Huff muttered. He looked a little flushed.
‘To get rid of hiccups. My mother always used to …’
‘I know, hic!’ Mr Huff nodded. ‘You already hic! told me that.’
‘Sorry?’ I frowned.
‘Forget hic! it!’ Mr Huff growled.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Joyce devouring a couple of rotten windfalls from the old apple tree.
‘Joyce!’ I yelled, clapping my hands violently to attract his attention. ‘Away from there! Go on! Home! Home!’
Hic!
Mr Huff inspected my hands, grimacing, apparently deeply offended by the cacophony they’d just produced.
‘It can sometimes be of help if you gently cup your fingers over your nose and mouth but continue to breathe normally,’ I added.
‘It’s gone hic! way beyond that hic! I’m afraid, hic! Miss Hahn,’ Mr Huff groaned.
‘Or … or people often say that a sudden, you know, a sudden shock …’
‘Carla?’ Mrs Seaton called over. ‘I think we may need to take off the handles from the front. Will that be okay with you?’
Hic!
‘… to just … you know, to jolt the mind out of …’
‘Carla?’
Oh God. Oh God. I have to, don’t I? Tell Mr Huff?
Don’t I, though?
‘Carla?’
‘It was me, Mr Huff,’ I murmured (because desperate situations require desperate measures, I suppose).
‘Pardon? Hic!’ Mr Huff leaned forward slightly, struggling to hear.
‘Carla?’ Mrs Seaton repeated. ‘The handles!’
I turned, waved my acquiescence, and then, ‘Joyce!’ I yelled. ‘Away from the bins! Joyce! Joyce! Away! Away from the bins!’
‘What did hic! you just hic! say?’ Mr Huff persisted, his manner suddenly quite urgent, taking a hold of my wrist and pulling me still closer.
‘Oh. Um. Uh …’
Hic!
I gazed down at his hand. On my wrist.
‘Uh …’
Hic!
Oh well. Caution be damned. Here goes.