I was standing on the roof of the old Look Out. I was standing there because it was completely exposed. You could see for miles around, and you could be seen from miles around. It was a place where you might simply become a part of the landscape. Like the flickering needle on a huge, earthly compass. I was offering myself up, for Orla, finding significance through insignificance. And I was determined not to cry again. If I stood here for long enough, then the urge to weep would eventually pass. The urge to mourn, too. And the urge to feel. I might even bundle them all together, somehow (these pointless emotions) – like a stack of firewood – and offer them up, en masse (where’s the lighter? Out of fuel? That’s just fine. A match’ll do).
So this is where I was (yielding to precisely these kinds of ludicrously self-pitying thoughts) when Mrs Meadows found me (well, I was quite hard to miss, I suppose). Mrs Meadows was somewhat out of breath. Her footwear (a cream court shoe) wasn’t entirely appropriate for the rough, rubble-strewn terrain, and utterly unsuitable for scrabbling across the temporary plank-and-corrugated-iron bridge which currently divided us. So she stopped at the other side, called out and waved.
‘Miss Hahn? Hello? Hello? Miss Hahn?’
She was clutching a slice of cake (deposited – by Mr Huff, no doubt – inside the torn-off lid of an old egg box). I gritted my teeth for a second (staring out to sea with hooded eyes), then turned and returned her jolly wave (transforming that benighted clench into a beaming smile) before carefully slipping and sliding my way back down on to firm land again.
Mrs Meadows proffered me the cake. I took it from her. ‘That looks delicious,’ I said, sniffing it, slightly suspicious.
‘It’s a swede cake,’ she said.
‘Oh. How lovely!’ I said. ‘And is that a touch of … of cinnamon?’
‘The original recipe calls for cinnamon,’ Mrs Meadows confided, ‘but I used nutmeg. And the plain, butter icing has been enlivened by a dollop of molasses.’
‘That sounds terribly wholesome,’ I murmured. ‘And also quite … quite regulating.’
She nodded.
‘It was very kind of you to bring me a slice,’ I added (wryly imagining an infinitely unfurling future in which a traumatized Mr Huff was compelled – for his manifold sins – to feast on a multitude of earthy yet exotic combinations from the warped culinary hand of Mrs Meadows).
‘Did I …’ Mrs Meadows frowned. ‘I hope I didn’t barge in on anything important when I turned up at the cottage earlier?’
My hand shot up to my head. ‘I really must return your hair-clip,’ I exclaimed, removing it.
‘But it was a gift!’ Mrs Meadows insisted.
‘And that was very kind of you’ – I nodded – ‘but I think its work is now done.’
‘Its work?’ Mrs Meadows echoed.
‘I’m just not sure if it’s entirely my … uh … my style,’ I confessed, passing it over. Mrs Meadows shrugged, took the clip, then slipped it, neatly, back into her own hair again.
‘And you didn’t interrupt a thing!’ I added, tucking my fringe behind my ear. ‘Not a thing!’
‘I thought you might have been arguing …’ Mrs Meadows still persisted.
‘A frank discussion,’ I maintained, ‘over nothing of any significance …’ I shrugged. ‘The bill for the utilities … you know … the faulty cistern … the … the badgers.’
‘Oh I wish I were a little more like you, Miss Hahn!’ Mrs Meadows sighed. ‘Aloof and tough and … and boyish and independent. I do have a very practical – I suppose one might best call it a “rational/scientific” – side, but then on the other hand there’s always been this powerful need to …’ – she frowned – ‘to nestle myself into a man, for support and … and comfort. To snuggle in. The way a … a little duckling feels driven to retreat from the world under its mother’s wing.’
My heart sank. I stared at Mrs Meadows, forlornly, wondering how on earth it had finally come about that this patently quite intelligent yet (at root, let’s face it) deeply idiotic woman was about to be entrusted to carry Orla’s precious legacy forward.
Then something suddenly struck me, and my heart instantly lifted. That was the whole point, surely? Orla had always been drawn to the least capable … the most chaotic and unfocused and … and stuck and undecided … That was her genius. That was her message. We were all to be a part of it. We were all equally significant in Orla’s eyes.
It wasn’t ever just about the big draws – the main players – it was always about the bit parts. The character roles. Even the extras. The kitchen scraps, I mused. Ah yes, the kitchen scraps. Especially those.
And in Mrs Meadows’s case (to give her her fair due) these scraps were all culled from the highest quality of ingredients: the scented skin of an exotic mango … a feather-light sprinkling of salmon scales … a barely used lapsang souchong teabag …
I imagined Orla’s message as a tiny, newly hatched quail’s egg being transported across the globe by a galumphing horde of panhandle-fingered clowns. Its very fragility (the egg’s) and the chaotic nature of that journey (the blocked exits, the open trapdoors, the questionable escape-routes) were an essential part of what might eventually make it so powerful – so explosive. Yes. I needed to believe that. And by this same crazy logic, the sillier Mrs Meadows was, the more luminous Orla’s message might become under her careless tutelage.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Mrs Meadows exclaimed, ‘Mr Huff wanted you to have this …’
She passed over a large envelope.
‘What is it?’
I took it from her, somewhat unnerved.
‘I don’t know. He just told me to bring it to you. He said I shouldn’t return to the cottage until you were standing right in front of me, holding it in your hands.’
‘The sheer arrogance of the man!’ I snorted.
‘Yes, wonderful, isn’t it?’ Mrs Meadows nodded (no perceptible sense of irony), then she squeezed my shoulder (a sympathetic squeeze, almost) and off she flitted.
I inspected the envelope. In small, neat lettering on the back, tightly squeezed into the bottom, far-right-hand corner (I imagine the placement of this message was of deep psychological significance), Mr Huff had printed ‘Please keep these, Miss Hahn,’ in pencil. The please underlined, for emphasis. I stared at his handwriting. My eye delighted (unhealthily) in its various idiosyncrasies.
I then clambered up on to the Look Out again, sat down with a sigh, rested the envelope across my lap, picked up Mrs Meadows’s slice of cake and gamely took a bite. I chewed and swallowed. The texture was perfectly light and airy, but the cake itself tasted of … I grimaced … of soap and walnuts … and … and (worst of all) innovation. Urgh! I tossed the remainder to the gulls who devoured it, squawking, then flew away (incognizant) like a little host of tiny guided, swede-and-nutmeg-laden missiles.
The envelope, when I opened it, was full of photographs. What else could it have been full of? Love?
But I couldn’t look at them. I didn’t … I wasn’t … I just … So I re-sealed it, leaned back on to my elbows, and sat quietly for an hour watching the sun sinking into the Channel (like a giant melting blob of raspberry sorbet), briefly relieved of all my burdens (aside from the gnats, obviously), feeling that special, empty brand of happiness only true melancholy brings.