Suddenly, and without any preamble, Ferdinand leant over towards me and placed his hot lips on mine and began to kiss me fiercely.
∼ I hope he’s parked the car.
Luckily, we were stopped at a lengthy traffic light. Ferdinand’s kisses tasted of a combination of things – marijuana and Irn-Bru, turpentine and Tunnock’s Teacakes, with a slight undertone of fried onions – a strange brew you could probably have marketed successfully, especially to children. Heaven knows where things might have gone if the traffic light hadn’t changed at that moment.
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).
∼ What about the shop? Nora says, the shopkeeper will have a phone.
But, no, he won’t, because the shop was now in darkness with all the metal grilles and shutters in place.
∼ Knock on a stranger’s door.
I was about to do that, but before I could even get out of the car the blue flashing lights of a police car appeared from nowhere out of the snow. Hardly had I had time to think to myself what good timing this was on the part of the forces of law and order when I found myself being dragged out of the car, handcuffed and pushed into the back of the panda car, whereupon one of the policemen informed me – in a polite, rather disinterested way – that I was under arrest for being in possession of a stolen vehicle and for being an accessory to a robbery.
‘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—
* * *
‘Flour,’ Henry Machin said, looking at the new corpse lying on his slab like a freshly caught fish. The pathologist ran his fingers along the dead woman’s skin and studied the trace of dusty white powder on his fingers.
‘Flour?’ Jack Gannet puzzled. ‘Plain or self-raising?’
Or Else
No, no, no, this is ridiculous. I obviously made the wrong choice. Let’s try again, even if it means sacrificing the kiss.
∼ It exists, it’s written down.
But apparently not, for I have no memory of it. If only I could be kissed by him again without having to go through everything else again.
* * *
The snow was beginning to settle thickly and most of the traffic had stopped but I could just make out the yellow headlights of a car moving slowly towards me along the Lochee Road. The car was almost obscured by the snow as it slewed to a gentle skidding halt on the other side of the road. It was the Cortina. The driver’s window rolled down and Chick’s ugly features resolved themselves out of the white kaleidoscope of snow.
‘Get in,’ he said. ‘You can die in weather like this, you know.’
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.
* * *
The Cortina had struggled as far as the junction of Dudhope Terrace with Lochee Road when I remembered something. Chick took some persuading but eventually I managed to get him to turn round and return to the DRI.
‘Back so soon?’ the receptionist said brightly, but with a rather wary look in her eye at my deranged appearance.
‘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.
* * *
Chick dropped me off at the end of Cleghorn Street. Even the plucky Cortina wasn’t going to make it back downtown on a night like this. The tail-lights of the car quickly disappeared into a wall of whiteness.
Terri had become a homemaker since I last saw her. The dingy flat in Cleghorn Street had been transformed into a cosy little love nest. Patchouli joss sticks burned on the mantelpiece, ‘Liege and Lief’ played on her Amstrad deck, a fire burned in the grate, church candles illuminated the dark and a boeuf Bourguignonne simmered in a well-behaved manner on the stove. Hank, the cause of all this domesticity, was stretched out on the mattress on the floor that served as Terri’s bed. The stale sheets on the bed had been replaced with fresh ones and Terri had purchased a piece of red dressmaker’s velvet to act as a princely counterpane for her new consort.
‘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.
* * *
I took advantage of Terri’s new personality and got her to help me finish my George Eliot essay. We were rather drunk by now and I think I was beginning to feel slightly delirious but nonetheless I struggled on until I’d finished (which is, after all, the only way to do it) – The schematic unity and integrity of Eliot’s vision must lead us to the conclusion that James’s comment that it is ‘a treasure house of detail’ is a flawed and, ultimately, prejudiced view of the novel and in fact reveals his aversion to the very concept of Middlemarch.
I was too tired to go home by then and ended up sleeping sardine-style with Terri and Hank. Despite being so tired I had a restless night, finally falling asleep to the sound of a milk-float engine and into a dream where I was trying to persuade a recalcitrant George Eliot to get into the back seat of the Cortina.
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?
∼ Who knows, Nora says.
‘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?
Hank pushed his cold nose impatiently into my gloved hand to encourage me to move. I stroked his lovely velvety pelt and smelt his warm meaty breath.
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 Moorland 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 ru
sty voice, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy in my life as I am at this moment.’
Words failed me.
* * *
But not for ever.
I stood and watched the happily reunited family drive away, the Sewells’ car fishtailing on the icy surface of Pentland Avenue. I still had Hank’s collar and lead in my hand and a couple of other hardy dog walkers gave me curious looks as if I was walking an invisible dog. I stood for a long time getting colder and colder, wondering what to do, and finally, because I couldn’t think of anything, I took my invisible dog for a walk in the park.
* * *
Eventually I headed home. I couldn’t find the courage to tell Terri that I had lost her dog. What chance was there that I could somehow get hold of another identical Weimaraner before Terri noticed that the original one was missing? Or perhaps I could employ Chick to re-kidnap Hank? Perhaps – most unlikely of all – Martha and Jay Sewell could find it in their hearts to come to some kind of custody arrangement with Terri.
These impossible thoughts were clouding my brain as I ploughed down Blackness Avenue through the icy grey slush that the snow had now become. On the Perth Road I was hailed by Professor Cousins, wearing strange rubbery overshoes and a red scarf tied around his head like a child or someone with an old-fashioned toothache. I could almost imagine that he had mittens on ribbons threaded through his sleeves.
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 –
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