Nicola Barker - In the Approaches

Her hands are the colour of boiled gammon! Extraordinary! Raw-looking. I quite pity her those awful hands.

‘Yes. The tail,’ I confirm, ‘in broad daylight. The cat was immensely fat. She was reversing at high speed, drunk as a skunk.’

‘The tail’ – she nods, slightly baleful, now – ‘was later amputated, and at some considerable cost to the owner, I’m told.’

‘You heard all about it, then?’ I smile, sarcastically.

‘He’s my father’s cat.’ She shrugs.

‘Oh. Mrs Barrow didn’t mention that,’ I murmur, somewhat perturbed by this sudden, quite unexpected, turning of the tables.

‘I think you’ll probably discover, on further acquaintance, that Mrs Barrow generally prides herself on leaving out the most important detail in any story. In fact you could almost say it’s her speciality.’ She smiles. Good, straight teeth. But the eyes … Tsk ! Watch out for those eyes! Dead as a dodo’s! Deader still! A predator’s eyes (the dodo, to its eternal credit, was a humble vegetarian). These are a carnivore’s eyes. These are the eyes of a pterodactyl, a tyrannosaurus rex.

‘He was your father’s cat …’ I ruminate, trying to work out the wider implications of this unwelcome detail, somewhat on the hoof, I’ll admit. ‘And I suppose that horrendously fat dog I see you dragging up and down the beach every morning and evening is your father’s dog?’

‘Strictly speaking, he was my late mother’s cat,’ she explains (ignoring the dog comment). ‘He’s called Rolfie. He’s forty-one years of age.’

‘The average life expectancy of a cat is fifteen,’ I say, incredulous.

‘Yes. I know.’ She nods, solemnly. ‘Rolfie is an incredibly old cat.’

‘So Rolfie has lived almost three times longer than the average cat?’ I persist, then promptly calculate: ‘The equivalent age – in a person – would be two hundred and ten.’

‘Yes,’ she confirms, patently unshaken by the comparison.

I just can’t let this one go. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as a little … uh … improbable?’ I wonder.

‘Yes’ – she nods again – ‘highly improbable. It’s perfectly amazing. A miracle of nature. And then your wife drove straight into him. Drunk. In broad daylight. At high speed.’

‘Oh. Well, I apologize for that,’ I mutter.

‘My father was rather traumatized,’ she idly adds, gazing dreamily at the clouds scudding across the sky above my head.

‘In all my born days,’ I muse, ‘I’ve never heard of a cat living to forty-one years of age. He must be the oldest cat in the world. The oldest cat in the known universe.’

‘You have a ladybird on your fringe,’ she murmurs, squinting slightly. ‘In fact you have two. Yes. Two. They appear to be … to be copulating.’

‘You have very red hands,’ I respond, swiping at my fringe.

‘I’m allergic to disinfectant.’

‘Then why don’t you wear rubber gloves?’ I demand.

‘And latex,’ she adds.

In truth I’m not entirely certain if there are two ladybirds on my fringe. This worries me. I’ve had no previous intimations that Miss Hahn might turn out to be an unreliable witness. Quite the opposite. A little mouse. I was told. A lamb . Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I was told. Damn. Damn . A propensity towards lying could prove catastrophic to my plans.

‘Anything else?’ I wonder.

‘Sorry?’

Her eyes are back with the clouds again. She seems to find great solace in the clouds, much as I do myself.

‘Allergies?’

‘Uh, nickel,’ she confirms, ‘and arrogance.’ She smiles. ‘You?’

‘Bullshitters.’

‘Oh, me too.’ She nods, most emphatically.

I can see now that this isn’t going to be all plain sailing. A short silence follows, punctuated by the cries of several gulls and the shrill whistle of a farmer in a nearby field, directing his sheepdog from the comfort of his tractor cab.

‘I’ll need to pop around to the cottage and have a look at that table,’ she eventually murmurs; ‘perhaps you might provide me with a convenient time to come over when you know for certain that you’ll be out?’

I’m still fiddling with my fringe.

‘The ladybirds have gone,’ she adds. ‘They flew away home.’

‘I may need to get back to you on timings,’ I say, with a measure of diffidence.

‘Fine.’ She shrugs. ‘Well you have my number, Mr Huff.’

‘Yes I do, Miss Hahn.’

She turns and picks up her bike. She suddenly seems very annoyed, but why exactly I am not entirely sure.

‘You seem rather annoyed,’ I say.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she exclaims, piqued. ‘Do enjoy the rest of your afternoon.’

And off she stalks, red hands and all.

What a curious woman she is! So brusque. A suggestion – a mere shadow – of the Germanic in her accent. Unkempt. Chaotic. Not unclean, just …

Unattractive. Well, not unattractive. But boyish. Uncouth. And untrustworthy, too – possibly. Yes. And tragically repressed! Poor little thing! A hysterical virgin. Ha! Obviously. Obviously . Could tell that from a mile off.

Shimmy is outraged by Mr Huff’s behaviour – so irked, in fact, that I almost regret telling him about it. I am soaking his gnarled old feet in a plastic bowl (the iced water scented with sage and lavender oil), while heating up some minestrone soup for a late lunch.

‘Zis Mr Huff has insulted us all!’ he exclaims, in typically exaggerated fashion (all shrugs, waving arms and eye rolls). ‘First ze careless assault by his drunken wife on poor Rolfie, zen zat monstrous “letter of apology” – a veb of deceit from start to finish; the shiksa vas driving at high speed you say?’

I nod. ‘Yes, apparently.’

‘Mrs Barrow tells me she always stinks of raw spirit!’ he declaims.

‘In her defence,’ I interject, ‘Mrs Barrow often confuses the smell of perfume with—’

‘Ha! Mrs Barrow iz nobody’s fool, Carla!’

‘And on the one, brief occasion that I actually met Mrs Ashe – Mrs Huff as we now know her – I did notice that she applied her perfume rather liberally. She was a quiet woman, very polished, well-groomed, sophisticated …’

‘Und now he haz insulted us all, en masse !’ Shimmy throws up his hands with such violence that the water in the bowl containing his feet starts to slosh.

‘Mind your feet!’ I say.

‘He questions za age of Rolfie? Oi! If he questions za age of Rolfie zen he questions ze integrity of your Mame ! If he questions ze integrity of your Mame , he questions my integrity, und yours too, meine Carla!’

‘He simply said that—’

‘He’s calling all of us liars! Feh! Fardrai zich deyn kop! Pass me his letter again, bubbellah !’

I pass Shimmy Mr Huff’s letter. It reads:

Mr Shimmy,

Mrs Barrow informs me that the cat which my wife Lara knocked into yesterday was yours. We are so very sorry. In Lara’s defence, the light was poor. She reversed from the driveway in Mulberry Cottage (where we are currently residing) and out on to the road with considerable care and was horrified when she realized that your cat had failed to get out of the way. It had been lying in deep shadow. It is a very heavy cat, and not, I imagine, especially nimble, although it did run off at some speed after the incident took place. The tail appeared kinked, but Mrs Barrow assures me that the tail has always looked like that.

I do hope the cat is all right. I am not a great fan of cats – of domestic pets in general – but I would never dream of hurting one in any way, shape or form.