I got in and we battled our way through the snow, the only car on the road. What an heroic beast the Cortina was. How familiar it seemed too, how familiar Chick seemed.
‘How come you’re always around, Chick, if you’re not following me?’
‘Maybe I am following you,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and offering me one. ‘That’s a joke,’ he added when he saw the expression on my face, ‘ha, ha.’
‘Did Maisie get home all right?’
‘Who?’
The acrid smell of Embassy Regal filled the car and drove out, momentarily, the scent of dead cat.
‘Been in the wars?’ Chick said. When I asked him what he meant, he pointed to my forehead and said, ‘That’s a rare bruise you’ve got.’ He turned the rear-view mirror for me to see and there indeed was a blue bump the size of a robin’s egg just where the Hornet’s door had slammed on me. How curious. For there was no trace of his kiss on my lips.
‘I forgot something,’ I said, searching the waiting-room until I found what I was looking for. My George Eliot was on the floor, under a chair, sandwiched between a Woman’s Journal and a Weekly News.
‘You take care as well now,’ I said to the receptionist as I left, but she didn’t look up.
‘Kinda homey, huh?’ Terri said, putting wood that she’d found in a skip in the street onto the fire. She was wearing what looked like a crinoline and smelt of sandalwood soap and meat, an odd, rather unsettling mix that I felt must be for Hank’s benefit. She had even made sausage rolls (‘Jus-rol, it’s easy.’). The sausage rolls were dog bite-size and every so often she would lob one in Hank’s direction.
She perched on the edge of the mattress to consult a book called Cooking for Two, biting her lip with the effort of reading a recipe.
‘How about an Apple Betty for dessert?’ she asked, although I wasn’t sure if this question was addressed to me or to Hank. It wouldn’t be long before she was greeting him when he came home from work (‘Hi, honey’), waiting at the front door for him with a Martini and a kiss, her hair fixed and her make-up freshened and a big Mary Tyler Moore smile on her face.
I defrosted in front of the fire while we finished what was left of the Don Cortez that Terri had used to make the boeuf Bourguignonne and had started on a bottle of Piat d’Or that had been chilling outside on the windowsill. When Terri opened the window to retrieve the wine, flakes of snow flew inside and fell on us like cold confetti tossed by an unseen hand.
While we drank the icy wine, Terri paraded for my benefit the ‘dog stuff’ she had bought – a Welsh blanket (a woollen honeycomb in pink and green from Draffens) and, from the pet shop on Dock Street, a doeskin collar, a stitched leather lead, and a brown pottery feeding-bowl with DOG stencilled on the side. Perhaps Terri should get a matching one that said GIRL on it. She had also had a tag engraved with Hank’s name and address and I noticed that Hank had taken Terri’s surname rather than the other way round.
‘Hey, sweetie,’ she said and stroked the dog’s flank, burnished by the candle flame and firelight, as she spoke to him in a low murmur, painting him a picture of their future life together, the visits to the beach at Broughty Ferry, day trips to St Andrews, chasing rabbits in Tentsmuir Forest, the daily walk to Balgay Park and the good times they would have romping amidst the gravestones of the dead burghers of Dundee. Hank rolled over and groaned at the word ‘walk’.
When Terri went through to the scullery to check on supper I tried a low-voiced, experimental ‘Buddy?’ on Hank. The effect was startling and unwelcome – Hank leapt off the bed, tail wagging, and walked round and round me, sniffing me enthusiastically as if my body carried news from somewhere far away.
‘Hey, you guys are getting on great,’ Terri said generously when she came back and saw the dog raising a paw in elegant supplication, gazing into my eyes as if waiting for me to tell him something profound. I was just wondering if this was a good time to tell Terri about Hank’s other life as Buddy – although obviously there was never going to be a good time – when she dropped to her knees, hung her arms around his neck and said, ‘I can’t tell you how happy this fella’s made me. I haven’t felt this good since before Mom died.’ Oh dear.
When I woke up the sky was the colour of old bone. I was on the cold side of the mattress. Terri was still fast asleep, her arms around her inamorato, nuzzling his neck. I crawled out of bed and wrapped myself in the Welsh blanket. I had a hangover that was mutating into some kind of brain disorder. I would have killed for a cup of tea but the power was off. As long as I lived, I vowed, I would never take electricity for granted again. I got dressed, pulled on my boots and put on my coat and got ready to leave.
Before I could, however, Hank woke up and started pawing at the door to be let out. As Terri looked as if she was having her first good night’s sleep in twenty-one years I said, ‘OK, Hank, buddy, let’s go,’ (a compromise form of address), and opened the door of the flat for him while I scrawled a note for Terri saying that I’d taken Hank for a walk because I supposed she would panic if she woke up and found him gone. Then I spent some time rummaging around for Hank’s new collar and lead, for George Eliot, as well as my bag, scarf and gloves, before eventually setting off down the stairs – all the leisurely while presuming that the door to the street would be locked as usual. When I got down to the close, however, I discovered the bottom door propped wide open to facilitate a flitting.
I pushed past a couple of removal men hefting a fridge and ran out into the street, treacherous with snow, and managed to catch a glimpse of Hank disappearing round the corner at the top of the street, tail whirling like a helicopter blade. By the time I got to the top of the street he had already crossed the incline of City Road, weaving his way through sliding cars, and was padding up Pentland Avenue, following some mysterious canine map in his head that led to Balgay Park. I trailed him all the way, shouting both his names at random, but he was too delirious with fresh air and open space to pay any attention. By the time I finally caught up with him at the entrance to the park I could hardly breathe, the freezing air in my lungs hurt so much.
Hank raced off before I could collar him, scampering like a puppy along a path leading up to the Mills Observatory. Being a naturally good-mannered animal, he paused every so often to allow me to catch up with him. The cold was raw and chafing, there was no sunshine to make the snow pleasant in any way, only a wintry greyness cast over everything, including the sleeping dead.
I followed Hank up to the Observatory and then down the slopes of the cemetery where the dead of Dundee – the whalers and spinners and shipwrights, the weavers and bonnetmakers, the sea-captains and the engineers – were all waiting patiently under the grass for a day that might never come. Was my father sleeping in a cemetery like this? Perhaps he lay in a pauper’s grave somewhere. Perhaps in a shallow grave of leaves and twigs. Picked clean by the little fish at the bottom of the sea. Or mere dust scattered to the wind?
‘So – he might be alive.’
~ Maybe, Nora admits with a sigh.
And my genuine mother as opposed to the fake whose company I keep. ‘Dead, I suppose?’
~ Very.
Is there anyone in the world that I am related to by blood?
He led me back to the entrance of the park and sat down patiently for me to put on his collar and lead, but just as I was about to buckle his collar a car drove up and pulled to a halt as if it was being driven by a stunt man and the familiar and over-excited figures of the Sewells clambered out. They were dressed for the weather, Jay in a windbreaker, Martha in Morland boots, an ankle-length sheepskin and a large fur-trimmed hat. Martha spotted the dog and stood rooted to the spot, screaming his name, while Jay ran towards us, skidding and sliding on the icy pavement and finally falling in an undignified heap in front of a very excited Hank and a not so excited me.
Martha hurried towards us as fast as the snow would allow her, taking little baby steps to avoid falling on her skinny derrière, crying out all the time, ‘My baby, my baby boy.’ Jay hauled himself to his feet and surprised me by catching me in a bear hug, jamming my face into his windbreaker so that I could smell the sweet, almost feminine smell of his aftershave and the breath freshener he was sucking.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, releasing me, ‘how can we ever thank you? Anything you want is yours, Edie.’
‘Effie.’
Anything I wanted? A fatted calf? A chest of treasure dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, brimming over with ropes of pearls, opals like bruises and emeralds like dragons’ eyes? A father? Ferdinand? A degree? But there was so much strung-out emotion fogging the air that it seemed too cold and calculating to request any of these things. Jay wiped a hand across his eyes and said to Martha, ‘Let’s get this guy home,’ while Martha, who now had tears streaming down her face, said in a rusty voice, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy in my life as I am at this moment.’
Words failed me.
I lent him my arm as he was slipping and sliding all over the pavements in an alarming way.
‘No sand on the pavements,’ he observed cheerfully, ‘that’s how accidents happen, you know.’ Perhaps Professor Cousins had become magically attached to me in some way – like a mitten on a ribbon – and I would have to spend the rest of my life entertaining him. I supposed there were worse ways to spend a life.
‘This is where I live,’ I said, steering him into Paton’s Lane. ‘Ah,’ Professor Cousins said, ‘home to Dundee’s own poetic bard –
Therefore, to save ourselves from accidents, we needn’t try to flee,
For whatsoever God has ordained will come to pass;
For instance, you may be killed by a stone or a piece of glass.’
~ Real, she affirms.
‘Stolen?’
~ Sort of.
‘Evangeline’s?’
~ Maybe.
I sigh with frustration. This is like getting blood out of a stone, drawing teeth from a tiger, wrenching dummies from babies. Has she been in possession of this treasure all through the years of our seaside poverty? Can she explain how she came by them? What a mystery my mother (but not my mother) is.
I decide on the patient approach of the concerned psychiatrist to pull her tale from her. These are deep waters we are fishing in. ‘Tell me your first memory?’ I say encouragingly to her. Surely we will find something innocent here, an insight into the childish building-blocks of character. My own first memory, of drowning, is not so innocent, of course. Perhaps it was a kind of afterbirth memory of swimming in amniotic fluid (for we are fish), and yet even as I write I can feel the icy water, filling my nostrils, my ears, my lungs, dragging me down into the depths of forgetfulness.
My second memory isn’t much better. We were catching a bus – one in an endless series in my fugitive childhood. A distracted Nora, preoccupied with the amount of baggage she was trying to get on board the bus, forgot all about me and left me sitting on a bench in the bus station and was two miles down the road before she realized that something was missing. The driver had to slam his brakes on when Nora stood up suddenly at the back of the bus and started screaming dramatically, ‘My baby! My baby!’ so that for one dreadful moment the driver thought he must have crushed Nora’s baby under his wheels. By the time he understood what she was shouting, Nora had precipitated hysteria in half the passengers and an asthmatic attack in a sensitive young librarian who gave up his calling not long afterwards and set off to travel the world in search of an excitement that could equal that of the wild, red-haired woman at the back of the bus. I’m imagining the librarian obviously.
‘And yet I wasn’t your baby,’ I muse to her, ‘was I?’ But whose baby am I, for heaven’s sake?
~ I thought you wanted my earliest memory?
‘Please.’
~ I am very small and they are very tall.
‘They?’
~ Lachlan and Effie. They must be . . . sixteen and eighteen, maybe a little older. Maybe younger.
‘I get the idea.’
~ It’s summer and they have taken me down to the loch for a picnic. I’ve always been their ‘pet’, their ‘plaything’. The trouble is, they treat their pets and playthings very badly. The sun is very hot and the black water is shining in the sun. Insects are dancing and skating on the surface of the water. I can smell rotting weed and heat and hard-boiled eggs –
(If only I had tried the hypnotic recall approach on her years ago.)
~ We’re sitting on the little jetty and they’re dipping their feet in the water, but my feet won’t reach. I’ve got a splinter in my finger from the rotten planks of wood and I’ve been stung by a nettle but when I cry Effie says that the giant fish-witch who lives in the loch will come and eat me if I don’t stop snivelling.
‘Fish-witch?’
~ Fish-witch. Lachlan says he can’t eat an egg without salt and hurls it overarm into the water where it splashes like a pebble. He’s red in the face from the heat. He says he’s bored. She says she’s bored. They smoke cigarettes. They make faces at each other.
They begin chasing each other, running around the woods, shrieking with laughter – they are always very childish when they’re together. Eventually they grow tired of this and decide to take the little wooden rowing boat out onto the lake. They put me in first, I can feel Effie’s arm round me, slick with sweat. Her hair’s damp on her neck and the cotton print dress she’s wearing is sticking to her body.
Lachlan rows the boat to the middle of the loch and then he jumps in the water and starts pretending to drown. Effie dives in, like a knife in the water, and they start racing each other to the shore. Lachlan does a butterfly stroke, splashing like a waterwheel, but he can’t catch Effie, who swims as sleekly as an otter and reaches the bank several lengths ahead of him. They clamber out and shake themselves like dogs. Then they start chasing each other again, screaming and laughing and they run off into the woods.
Then everything falls silent. After a long time of waiting for them to return and an even longer time of realizing they’re not going to, I fall asleep in the heat. When I wake up my skin is sore from the heat. The sun has started to sink behind the trees now and it’s growing cold. I’m terrified the fish-witch is going to rise out of the water like a leaping black salmon and eat me.
I fall asleep again. When I wake it’s dawn – the loch is covered in mist but by the time anyone comes to look for me, the mist has dissolved and the sun is high again. I am the only person ever admitted to the local cottage hospital who is suffering from sunburn and hypothermia at the same time. Afterwards, they said I had run away from them, but really I think they were trying to get rid of me.
‘Why?’
~ Because they were wicked, of course.
‘But you learned about boats and swimming from your sister, didn’t you?’ I puzzle to her. ‘Did that come later?’
~ Not from her, she never taught me anything. I learned in case she tried to drown me.