really need to just try and … I dunno. Grow a set. Stop over-thinking. Stop making everything twice as complicated as it needs to be. Heroes don’t dither, do they? Do they? No. Heroes aren’t ditherers.
Uh. Sorry. Could you just feed me that line again, please?
‘Well that’s a very strange place to store your bulbs!’
Uh … Okay. Uh … I already did the smile, didn’t I? The hayseed’s goofy smile (my staple)? So how about I just repeat what he said back to him and then work the rest out from there?
‘A very strange place to store your bulbs. Yes. Very strange indeed. You must be Mr Huff. You were holed up in the bathroom when I first arrived. I’m Clifford. Clifford Bickerton. People call me Rusty.’
We shake hands.
‘Did you see the shark?’ Mr Huff asks, following me over to the front porch where I quickly re-fit the bulb. ‘Yup.’ I nod (Don’t give anything away, Clifford!).
‘Very convenient being so tall,’ Mr Huff observes.
‘Great for replacing bulbs,’ I affirm, ‘but not so great in other arenas. It’s hard to cram myself inside certain models of car.’
Mr Huff nods.
‘I sometimes break antique furniture.’
Mr Huff nods again.
‘And I play havoc with sofa and bed springs.’
Mr Huff considers this, scowling.
‘And everything’s dusty.’
Mr Huff looks quizzical.
‘I’ve noticed how women never dust above their own height. Up here I find everything’s dusty. It’s sad. I’ve often thought how there’s something deeply unloved about this altitude.’
Mr Huff’s eyes de-focus. I am boring him already.
‘I mean how are we going to dispose of it,’ he wonders, ‘with the bin stuck up on the Look Out?’
‘Follow me,’ I say, and walk around, through the little allotment (Ye Gods! He obviously hasn’t fed the badgers) to the front porch where the shark currently abides. I pick it up by the tail, take two steps forward and toss it over the cliff into the mess of rocky gorse below.
‘Bloody hell!’
Mr Huff is scandalized.
‘Something’s bound to eat it eventually.’ I shrug. ‘I’ll go and fetch you that bin now, eh?’
‘Will you climb up the little ladder?’ Mr Huff is intrigued. ‘It seemed a rather precarious arrangement when I went up there the other day.’
‘The ladder’s not a good option,’ I inform him. ‘The metal joists are corroded. It has a history of suddenly shearing off – falling out of the wall …’
Mr Huff blanches.
‘But there’s a series of thick planks hidden in some nearby bushes,’ I add, trying to keep the atmosphere positive, ‘and a quantity of corrugated iron. We generally construct a sloping walkway from the edge of the far end of the rock to the roof. It’s not especially stable …’
‘We?’ Mr Huff asks.
‘Local folk,’ I say, casually.
I stride out and Mr Huff follows. We retrieve the bin in no time. When we return we find a woman in the garden accompanied by two large red setters, tending the little girl’s shrine.
Mr Huff is not best pleased by her sudden arrival. One could almost go so far as to say that he is infuriated by it, and doubly so when one of the dogs menaces him as he opens the gate.
‘Do you know this person?’ he asks, stopping by the gate as I position the bin in its regular place, scowling.
‘Uh … no. But there’s a little gang of them,’ I say. ‘Good, decent Catholic women in the main. Locals for the most part. They aren’t too much of a problem. It’s the other group – the Romanies – you’ll need to keep an eye out for. They come up here in their vans and block off the roadway. Infuriates the people in the Coastguards’ Cottages, it does. Causes no end of trouble.’
‘But this is trespass, surely?’ Mr Huff persists.
‘If you try and stop them you’ll only make them more determined.’ I grin.
‘Faith is like bindweed,’ Mr Huff snarls, ‘an unremarkable enough plant, but give it any kind of leeway and you’ll find it pushing its fragile green shoots through thick inches of brickwork.’
‘They have Carla’s blessing.’ I shrug, moving past him.
‘Yes. Miss Hahn said as much in her Welcome Pack,’ Mr Huff grumbles, following. At the mention of Carla’s name he seems profoundly demoralized. I glance back at him as we circumnavigate the allotment to avoid the dogs. He looks ragged. I notice the pinkness of his irises, the bags under his eyes.
‘No point railing against it,’ I console him (emboldened by the Welcome Pack comment). ‘It’s going to be a major part of the plot at some point, I suppose.’
‘Sorry?’ Mr Huff looks confused.
‘The plot. The story,’ I repeat, ‘you know …’ I blithely indicate towards the little shrine. ‘Orla Nor Cleary. The truth behind what really happened back then. The subject of your book – the book. Everything else – the parrot, the landslip, this – it’s all just incidental detail, surely? Just filler. I mean I can’t speak for you, obviously, but I know I’m totally insignificant – just a minor character, a handy plot device. That’s it.’
Still nothing from Mr Huff, but it’s almost as if he starts to … to fade.
‘I’m very tired,’ he says, flickering. Or is it me that’s flickering? It’s hard to tell.
‘Mrs Barrow mentioned a rabbit?’ I quickly change the subject.
‘Rabbit?’ He instantly jumps back into sharp relief.
‘Mrs Barrow said you were building it a hutch.’
‘Yes,’ he sighs, ‘I suppose I am.’
‘It might be worth popping down to see Shimmy, Carla’s dad,’ I suggest. ‘His wife – Else, Carla’s mother – used to keep rabbits when Carla was a kid. She bred some kind of German lop. Huge beasts, they were. They ate them. After the war …’
Mr Huff is staring at me with a strange look on his face. You might almost call it a … a haunted look.
‘And they kept rescue dachshunds,’ I blather on. ‘She had about twelve of them, in kennels. It was a long time ago now, obviously. But he’s a great hoarder. He might still have something useful tucked away in one of his sheds.’
Mr Huff nods, but
