Emotionally Weird (30 page)

Personally, I think it better if this kind of thing develops naturally between two people, rather than as a result of intervention. On the other hand, I may never get this opportunity again.

A little further on, Ferdinand parked the car, rather carelessly, outside a shop that was still open on the City Road and said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Another car loomed out of the snow and glided to a silent stop behind the Hornet but no-one got out and the snow was too thick for me to see who was inside it.

I was just nodding off to sleep when Ferdinand came out of the shop, but hardly had he taken a step onto the snowy pavement when two men got out of the car behind and approached him. One of them said something to him that I couldn’t hear and then almost immediately the other one punched Ferdinand in the stomach. He doubled up in pain and fell to his knees. I opened the car door although I had no idea what I was going to do, they hardly seemed the type to respond to polite female remonstrance. But before I could make a move to get out of the car one of the men slammed the door shut again. My forehead bounced off the glass of the car window and I could feel a bruise start to form immediately.

The man leant down so that his face was close to the window. He grinned at me, showing rotten, crooked teeth, and then suddenly produced a knife, a huge hunting one that could have felled a bear, curved like a scimitar, with a serrated edge that glinted beneath the street light. He tapped this malevolently against the glass, grinning all the while like a storybook bandit. The message was clear and did not need words.

Then the men yanked Ferdinand to his feet, pulled his arms behind his back and bundled him into their car and drove off in a great flurry of snow, skidding round the corner onto Milnbank Road and disappearing from view.

This wasn’t going at all well. I sat for a while waiting for my pulse to slow a little, worried my heart was about to give up. I wasn’t sure what to do next – reporting the incident to the police was the first thing that came to mind but I wouldn’t get very far if I tried to walk in this weather, and I certainly wouldn’t make it as far as the police station in Bell Street without succumbing to hypothermia. The car probably wouldn’t make it either, as the whole world had now turned white and anyway I hadn’t driven a car since taking lessons in Bob’s ill-fated old Riley 1.5 (a tale that still doesn’t need telling).

‘Robbery?’

The policeman nodded towards the shop which was once more brightly lit and open for business. The owner was standing on the doorstep and observing my predicament with satisfaction.

The other policeman looked at his watch and said, ‘Night in the cells for you, I’m afraid,’ and started up his engine and—

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?