In the Approaches. Nicola Barker
Where?!
Run down the ‘perch’! Jump into the ‘bowl’! Throw out the food. Sod off! Go! Scram! Take that! Take that! Hah! WAH!
Yay!
Sudden quiet! Brave Baldo! Clever Baldo! Dead monster!
Preen!
‘Teobaldo! **** **! *** Teobaldo! ******!’
[‘Teobaldo! Stop it! Bad Teobaldo! Enough!’]
Yes! That’s me! Teobaldo! That’s me! Happy! Happy! Dead monster! Hah! Here she comes.
Urgh. Finger. Urgh! Kill the finger! Eat the finger! Urgh! Come on! Head tip. Watch finger! Waggle finger!
Come on! Come on!
Bitch.
WAH!
‘Teobaldo! ***** ****** ** **** ****! ***** ***! *** ***! **** ******** ** **********!’
[‘Teobaldo! You’ve messed in your food! Silly boy! Bad boy! Stop throwing it everywhere!’]
Baldo a girl. La la! Baldo a girl. La la! Baldo a girl, you bitch jailer fool.
Where’s Baldo’s egg? Eh? Bitch?
Where’s Baldo’s mate? Eh?
Where’s Baldo’s nest?
Just. Let. Baldo. Go!
Wanna fly! Wanna fly! Wanna fly!
Rock, rock, rock, rock.
No fly.
‘Cage’.
‘Cage’.
What Baldo do so bad? Eh?
‘Ceiling’. ‘Cage’. Dead wings. Can’t … Can’t … Trapped. Panic in bones. Dead wings.
Itch! Itch! Ruffle feathers. Scratch!
Breuuugh!
That’s better!
Breuuugh!
That’s better!
Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!
Uh-oh! Here she comes again!
‘**** **** Teobaldo! **** ********** ********! ***** ***** **** *** *****, eh?
‘Pretty boy! ***** ***** **** *** *****? Eh? ** ** *** ******? Eh? **** *** **** *** ******? **** ** ****** * **** ** *** *** ****** ** *** ******* ** ******** **** **** ** ** *** *****. Eh? Pretty boy!’
[‘Stop that, Teobaldo! Stop scratching yourself! What’s wrong with you today, eh?
‘Pretty boy! What’s wrong with you today? Eh? Is it the hoover? Eh? Don’t you like the hoover? Well I’m afraid I have to use the hoover if you persist in throwing your food on to the floor. Eh? Pretty boy!’]
Baldo! Baldo! Baldo! Baldo!
Pretty boy! Pretty boy! Pretty boy!
But Baldo a girl!
La!
Baldo a girl!
Ta-dah!
Pretty boy!
Preen!
Eh? Eh?! Where ‘sun’ go?
Huh?
Where ‘sun’?
Where’d it go?
WAH!
7
I don’t know why I imagined I’d make it all the way around to Hastings before the tide came in. It was an ambitious scheme, at best – not so much even a scheme as a blithe notion, a vague ‘urge’, a complete spur-of-the-moment thing – and I was (quite frankly) unsuitably shod. It’s a challenging walk, much of it demanding – with the tide coming in, out of sheer necessity – a measure of energetic clambering and even leaping from large rock to large rock.
An ambitious scheme, as I’ve said. A foolish scheme. And then, when I finally made it back (forty-eight hours later! Barely still in possession of life and limb) … On my eventual return … The conquering hero (ha, ha, ha) …
Urgh! How else can I describe the vileness I encountered? Just … just … just plain … urgh!
Yes. Yes. So it was a rather silly plan, in retrospect. Irresponsible. I am currently in possession of the Tide Tables for Dungeness, Rye Bay and Hastings (courtesy of our Ms Hahn, no less; part of the cottage’s Welcome Pack). Pett Level doesn’t actually have its own Table (too small, insignificant) – it falls ‘in the approaches’ of Rye Bay and Hastings, but even so, it still doesn’t demand much basic common sense to puzzle the tides out. I didn’t tarry to make this calculation, though, just grabbed my keys and my wallet (no. Not the keys, just the wallet) and blithely set off. It was a silly scheme. It would be fair to say that I sincerely regret it, now. I do. I really do. I regret the leaving, but gracious me! The return! When I finally dragged my way back home (no bus fare! That endless trudge from Hastings over hard road and soggy field!) … On my eventual …
I see it clear as day in my mind’s eye: that lone dustbin perched – somewhat improbably – atop the Look Out (visible from quite some distance off). A warning shot across my bows. An omen. But I just gazed at it, quite innocently, idly pondering the logistics of it all. How on earth did that …? I mean it’s a difficult enough scramble up there without …
I was just way too frazzled to register that this was my bin, that this was my issue …
Perhaps I was actually heading for the New Beach Club (that previous afternoon but one) although the NBC is actually in the opposite direction to Hastings, so possibly not. Or, better still, to The Smuggler (which is en route), for a stiff drink or three. I don’t precisely recall. Although I was dangerously short of cash. Yes. Only had enough for a Schweppes bitter lemon or a Coke. Perhaps I was just …
What was I doing?
Letting off steam?
Getting some much-needed air?
Thinking things through on the hoof?
Walking it out?
All of the above?
I don’t really know why I left (it’s honestly just a blur now – a pointless irrelevance), but then to return to … I mean to come back to the cottage (my base, my home, my … my lair), stagger into the bedroom – exhausted, depleted – and find … Urgh!
The bin was definitely a warning. Then the porch light wouldn’t work. The bulb was missing. Then …
Urgh. Urgh. Urgh!
It now occurs to me that perhaps I hadn’t taken the news of Kimberly’s passing quite so well as I’d initially thought. How I loathe that word: ‘passing’! It smacks of the clairvoyant: the velvet curtain, the spotlight, the odour of a cheap cigar. It’s a verb that tiptoes gingerly around the ineffable absolutes of mortality: the stiffness, the coldness, the imminent putrescence. The ineluctable gone-ness.
‘Passing’. It’s an end without an end – an end without a beginning, even. A cowardly avoidance.
But how else to … to get through all those unbearable sentences – those endless, stewing thoughts – each one punctuated by the thudding, hammer-blow of ‘dead’? That savage, nail-in-the-coffin word. I used it – I had