you. She worked as a war photographer for several years. Her photographs were amazingly … I don’t know … comprehensive, habitually copious, all-inclusive …’
As he speaks I quietly remember Kimberly and her camera. On the beach, in the garden, the house. Yes. I remember the camera always snapping. I remember – countless times, countless times – being briefly blinded by the flash.
‘I should go and take a quick peek at that bathroom window,’ I say. There are dark feelings in my heart. That’s the only way I can describe them – the feelings. Dark. I mean to be so easily … so … so routinely ignored.
Who’s behind this I wonder? Who’s at the back of this? Is it her? The Author? Has she gone back into the photographer’s portfolio, the photographer’s mind and just … just silently erased …?
Oh for heaven’s sake!
Just fix the window, Rusty! Just go and fix the window!
I walk through the cottage to the bathroom (ducking to avoid the door lintels, the light fitments). When I get there I realize that I have no tools with me. The ceiling is very low. I can’t straighten my neck. And there is a rabbit in the bath. A tiny rabbit. It has a very … a very deep, a quiet, an almost … a mystical quality about it.
Pink eyes. Pink nose.
I perch on the edge of the bath and I watch it. I look like I am communing with the rabbit (from the outside, in the uncut footage), and I am – but I am also hatching a plan. Yes. Me – I – Clifford Bickerton, Rusty Bickerton. I am hatching a plan. A secret plan. Which I won’t divulge here, because it’s a secret, obviously.
Every so often I think, Is this her? Is this her plan? Or is it me?
And then I expunge those thoughts (expunge? Is that a word I would use, naturally? Is it my word or is it … Oh God, is it her word?). I stare at the little rabbit.
Hello, rabbit! It’s me, Clifford, the Invisible Man!
The invisible man, eh? Ha! Well we’ll see about that, shall we, my little pink-eyed friend, hmmn?
12
It’s because I’m so over-wound, so damn tired. I mean to be … to find myself intent on building a rabbit cage (a rabbit cage! A rabbit cage!) when I should actually be … I don’t know … arranging the flowers. She loved freesias, hyacinths, old-variety pinks (those foul, dirty-looking ones), anything aromatic, anything with a scent in other words.
Yes. I should be involved – on hand. Worrying about the details. I should be selecting the coffin, bearing the coffin. Choosing the music (something scruffy and pointless and suitably inconclusive by The Band). I should be planning the eulogy. Just being … being there. But instead I’m here. Here. In this hell-hole with its maddeningly attractive English view and its slightly broken-down, chaotic, self-satisfied, bohemian … And the only solid food I’ve consumed in the past three days (that I’m consciously aware of) is a tangerine. Or a satsuma. Or a clementine.
I’m broke. Broke! Kim had promised to send me a cheque just as soon as the advance came through …
Dammit!
And now she’s … she’ll be … for ever … indubitably … incontrovertibly …
Ka-ka-ka-put.
Ker-plunk.
Doiiiing!
So I go over to Mr Hahn’s cottage (it’s only a short walk) to enquire about the rabbit cage … A rabbit cage? This is ridiculous! Ridiculous! And I am approaching the front door when I hear a kind of … a little wail. A pathetic, little wail. A cat? An injured hedgehog? An amorous fox? So I jink left, to the side of the property, down a badly kept gravel path and I see … I see … How to put this politely? A bum in the air. High up. Halfway over a tall gate. Two slim legs kicking aimlessly.
Of course to free up my hands to help (of course – but of course!) I am obliged to fill my mouth with the rest of the tangerine – satsuma – clementine. But then I can’t … I can’t communicate! Ridiculous! So I … I kind of … I pat the bottom gently, to alert it to my presence, move the bike (yes, there’s a bike), try and grab the foot to …
I know. Yes. I do know that it’s Carla Hahn’s foot (who else could it possibly belong to but she?). It is, isn’t it? Yes. It is. It’s her foot. And (for the record), one of her deck shoes is falling off, revealing an old sock with a giant hole in the heel (so unfeminine! So unedifying!). She kicks out this foot, emitting another curious little yelp. And I see that her awful trousers with the roped-up waist, or another pair just like them – equally unflattering – have become hooked over a little jutting piece of wood. The belt has become hooked, I mean, the rope belt. So I say … I mean I’m speaking, although not especially well … what with the half tangerine (all this is happening very quickly, much more rapidly than I could hope to describe it – a mere matter of seconds) … I say, ‘Brace yourself. I’m going to unhook your jeans from a little … uh …’
And I unhook them. In fact I untie them. And then she falls like a bag of potatoes, out of the trousers. She disappears from view. The heel of her old white plimsoll almost smacks me in the face.
Oh balls!
‘Hello? Can you hear me? Are you all right?’
Short silence, followed by a door opening and someone speaking in a thick, German accent, followed by the gate-person, the fallen person (Miss Hahn) yowling plaintively, ‘I’ve dislocated my thumb!’
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I suddenly think that this might be a good time to make myself scarce. I’m not … I’m not running away, as such, no. I’m just not … not emotionally equipped to engage with all this right now. I didn’t … I didn’t ask for this to happen. I mean I should be planning a funeral, attending a funeral. And if not in fact, well, then at least in my fevered brain. The perfect funeral for Kimberly. A fantasy funeral for darling Kimberly, my recently deceased …
I just don’t need all this … all this … uh …
When I return to the cottage (a little out of breath, slightly furtive, perhaps) I find the big man, Clifford Pemberton (Is it Pemberton?) sitting out front on the bench. He is deep in thought. He has the rabbit in his hand. It fits, in its entirety, into his giant palm.
‘That was quick!’ he remarks.
‘Nobody home,’ I lie.
‘Oh. Well I had a thought while you were gone,’ he says, pointing towards a partially dismantled chest of drawers which is lying on its back close by on the lawn. ‘I found it in the shed,’ he says. ‘She was planning to chop it up for kindling – but in the meantime …’
I go over to inspect it.
‘We’ll need some kind of …’
‘Already thought of that …’
