by Nathaniel Westlake, no less. Amazing. Yes – yes! I had broken in (I have no memory of this) and I’d confessed a pile of hysterical mumbo-jumbo, in Spanish, to the priest, then knelt and prayed with him (we’d conversed freely – he was born and raised in Alicante), then jumped up and ran off. I’d tried to make a sled out of a bakery pallet and had careered down the Old London Road on it (I was relatively successful, in other words), ending up in a large bush of pampas grass (slightly cut lip – evidence of white fluff in hair). I had stolen and eaten half a loaf. I was wearing lipstick (yes!). Orange lipstick. In giant circles around my eyes. Three cigarettes had been stubbed out on the top of my hand. My right hand. And the rabbit? A dwarf breed. Quite rare. Of indeterminate age, it transpires. Nobody knew where it had come from, only that I’d been finding great solace in it. The officer had kindly fed it a carrot.
It was a white rabbit with pink eyes. I walked all the way home with it held in a makeshift sling fashioned out of my jacket. Even now I find it incredible to think that I would have walked all that way with it. I am no fan of small mammals. I have given it a temporary berth in the bath. In the bath the enamel turns its white fur a yellower hue. Strange how the act of comparison can suddenly transform one clearly defined object into something else altogether. Life has a nasty habit of doing that.
I noticed that there was a tiny hole in the bathroom window. Later on I found an even tinier stone in the toilet bowl.
But that was not all I found. Oh no. The bin, the missing bulb, the hole in the window (all serious, in their own way, admittedly) were as nothing by comparison (that rabbit in the bath phenomenon, remember?) with the thing I found in my bedroom. I say ‘thing’, but it was more than a mere ‘thing’, it was a performance, a staging, an extravaganza. It was a complete one-act drama. I hate to oversell it, but … come with me. Enter the room. Push open the door and then grimacingly recoil. There is a smell … Not even a smell, a stink, a vile, ungodly odour. Something so foul, so rank, that mere words – simple, uncomplicated language – cannot do justice to its offensiveness. A slap in the face. A physical reaction. A gut reaction. A violent recoil. An existential shudder. A withering of the soul. A shrinking. A boring at the nostril. A tearing at the throat.
But where? From whence doth this rancid odour hail, pray tell? (I’ve fallen into Olde English in a pathetic attempt to try and encompass how primordial this smell is, how primitive, how base, how … how medieval – and how fearful I am, how confused, how repulsed; but still pretending, nevertheless, to be bold, pretending to be jocular; call to mind, if you must, a cheery fifteenth-century soldier – a Man of Fortune – or, better still, a palsied whore or cocky jester.) I search the room, a shirt over my face. My forehead is instantly dripping with sweat. My hand is a claw. I am a zombie. My body is panicking. It’s instinctive. The smell is so … so engulfing.
Eventually I settle on my suitcase, my empty suitcase (old leather, a gift from my maternal grandfather when I went up to Cambridge). It lies under the bed. I drag it out by its handle. I am so full of dread. Hands shaking. Palms wet. I steady myself. My heart is pounding. One, two, three – Come on, Franklin! Grow some balls, man! – I throw open the lid.
NNNAAAAARRRRGGHHHH!
So much worse – so, so much worse – than I could possibly have anticipated! Several hundred huge, buzzing bluebottles swarm out of the case and into my face. It is as though the devil himself (I’m an atheist, but bear with me) has been compressed in that small space. And now he is free. And he is angry. The sound! The intensity of that roar! The violence of those wings! The sense of un … un … unexpurgated filth! And remaining? In the case? The putrefying corpse of a dead shark. A dead sand shark, no less.
Urgh!
Urgh!
I vomited – instantly, spontaneously – on to my own, damp lap.
The sheer indignity!
Words cannot do justice. No. No. Sometimes, even justice – even justice – cannot do justice.
8
I am trapped (a pathetically bleating shrew dangling from a savage hawk’s bloodied talon) in the midst of a polite exchange with the indomitable Bridget ‘Biddy’ West, who is manning the Post Office counter in the Fairlight General Store (Biddy: ‘So how many metres of garden did you say you have left, now, Carla?’ Me: ‘Uh … Eight? Nine? I’m not very metric. Eleven or twelve good strides from the back door.’ Biddy: ‘The shed was quite some distance away from the property, then?’ Me: ‘There’s an old extension out back. A sun room that Tilda – the owner, Tilda Gower – closed in with a little pine-wood sauna. It’s … The bungalow is basically just a series of tiny extensions, one next to the … uh … to the … uh … other.’ Biddy: ‘So you’ve told Matilda about the landfall?’).
At this (let’s call it the second ‘uh …’ moment) I am horrified to espy the giant bulk of Clifford Bickerton (previously observed, minutes earlier, driving his van – at considerable speed – towards Hastings on the Fairlight Road) blocking all the light from the windows in the door.
Bugger, bugger, bugger! I was certain I’d got away with it this time! I’d been so careful, so stealthy (had even jumped behind a buddleia to be 100 per cent sure)! Has he been – is he – following me again? Why oh why didn’t I just answer his calls and have done with it? Why didn’t I just speak to him directly when he came to the bungalow the other afternoon, in person, to offer help? Oh bugger, bugger, bugger.
The bell cheerfully tinkles as the door is pushed open and Clifford squeezes himself inside like some huge, red otter gently violating a disused vole hole. Whenever Clifford Bickerton enters any environment constructed for standard human habitation an atmosphere far more appropriate to a Grimm’s fairy tale is promptly established. He is big, powerful, tall, auburn-haired and bushy-bearded with hands like pitchforks and feet like hams. He has been uniquely fashioned for the barn and for the field.
‘So you’ve told Matilda about the landfall?’ Biddy repeats, ignoring the placid and unassuming Clifford completely.
‘Uh …’ I am thrown into confusion, ‘Yes. No. That’s … that’s actually why I’m sending this letter.’
I point towards the letter which I am currently buying stamps for as Clifford smacks his head into the light fitment and quietly curses.
‘You couldn’t ring her?’
Biddy continues to ignore Clifford.
‘No. She’s still travelling.’
‘The Great Wall?’
I nod. ‘She has an itinerary. Her next official pit-stop is somewhere called Huanghua. But she’s been delayed by an infected mosquito bite on her heel. Every few months I receive a letter …’
Clifford is currently inspecting the rack of cellophane and Sellotape. He picks up a packet of Blu-Tack. He seems deeply engrossed in the writing on the back.
‘Is that her name in Chinese, then?’ Biddy wonders, indicating the top line of the address.
‘No. I think it says something like … uh … “to the crazy, European lady traveller who is walking the Great Wall. I humbly ask that you – the wall guard at Huanghua –
