Emotionally Weird (28 page)

I made my excuses. I finally found Olivia in the cafeteria queue, trying to juggle a tray of food with the unwieldy body of Proteus and a newfangled McLaren buggy, striped in blue and white and folded up like an umbrella. I offered to take the tray and she said, ‘Thanks,’ and handed me Proteus instead. He had an angry red teething rash on his cheeks and one small boxer’s fist jammed in his mouth as if he was trying to eat himself.

‘You haven’t seen Kara, have you?’ Olivia asked. ‘Only she asked me to hold him for a minute and that was ages ago.’

‘No, sorry.’

She was loading up her tray with cartons of milk and assorted Kellogg’s Variety Packs. ‘Do you think he can eat these?’ she asked me. ‘They don’t have any baby food in the Union.’

We found a space at the corner of a table. Olivia sat Proteus on her knee and we tried pushing spoonfuls of cereal in his mouth, an idea which he seemed to find alarming and exciting at the same time. Every time the spoon approached him he opened his mouth like a giant baby bird and then went into a kind of delirious spasm, throwing his arms and legs out and squawking at the novelty of it all. Occasionally he spat out Ricicles or Coco Pops like grapeshot. ‘I’m sure it’s time he was weaned anyway,’ Olivia said, rather sheepishly.

‘Is that what we’re doing?’ I really did know nothing.

‘Roger wants me to have the baby,’ Olivia said.

‘The baby?’ I repeated, confused. I had forgotten she was pregnant and for a moment thought she was talking about Proteus.

‘He says I can move in with him and Sheila.’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘Can you imagine?’

I couldn’t. ‘Does Sheila know?’

‘No. It doesn’t matter anyway,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m going to have an abortion.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, you’re really good with babies.’

‘I think it’s wrong to bring babies into this awful world,’ she said sadly. ‘I mean, all you would want would be for them to be happy and that’s the one thing that people aren’t, isn’t it? I couldn’t bear the idea of knowing that my child was unhappy. Or that when they’re old – a helpless old man, or a little old lady – you wouldn’t be there to look after them because you’d be dead by then.’ I wished I could think of something cheerful to say in response to this rather tragic outburst but at that moment Proteus gave a fractious cry and we both stared at him as if he might hold a key to some mystery, but he had jammed his fist back in his mouth and looked on the verge of tears.

‘He’s burning up, poor lamb,’ Olivia said, putting one of her cool, pale hands on his forehead. ‘I’d better take him out of here.’ The Union was full of noise and smoke which probably wasn’t good for a baby and certainly wasn’t good for me so I followed her out.

‘Thanks, anyway,’ Olivia said, ‘you’re a real friend,’ which made me feel suddenly guilty because I didn’t really think of us as friends.

‘See you,’ she said.

‘Yes to both questions. Come on, we’ll be late.’

A feeble shout directed us to the slight figure of Professor Cousins, trotting towards us along the pavement as fast as he could. ‘Hello there,’ he gasped. I sat him down on a bench at Seabraes to recover and we contemplated the view of the railway goods yards and the Tay (which today was dull pewter) until he got his breath back.

‘We have to go,’ Maisie said.

‘It’s Dr Lake’s daughter, isn’t it?’ Professor Cousins said to her. He started clicking his fingers. ‘No, don’t tell me, the name will come to me in a minute.’ He twisted his whole body in an outlandish effort to remember.

‘You mean Lucy,’ Maisie said.

‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed.

‘We’re going to be late,’ Maisie said, growing more impatient.

‘Are we going somewhere nice?’ Professor Cousins asked hopefully.

‘No.’

‘She is dead, trust me,’ I hissed, remembering Chick’s macabre penknife test.

‘Dear Lucy,’ Professor Cousins said affectionately, ‘she’s quite the little ghoul, isn’t she?’

Mrs McCue, at whose invitation Maisie was present, although heaven knows why – some kind of initiation rite into womanhood, probably – put a restraining hand on the bony shoulder of her granddaughter who, in her enthusiasm, looked to be in danger of falling into the open grave. Mrs McCue was wearing her funeral hat – black felt with a brim – that she had tied onto her head with a Rainmate.

Professor Cousins gave Chick a cheery wave. He seemed to be enjoying himself. There were quite a few other mourners, considering that Miss Anderson was supposedly a crabbit wee wifie. Mrs Macbeth, naturally, had accompanied Mrs McCue along with a minibus of Anchorage residents.

‘Like a day-trip in a charabanc,’ Mrs McCue said disapprovingly. ‘It’s not as if any of them liked her.’

‘Neither did you,’ Mrs Macbeth reminded her.

There was a small knot of relatives of the deceased who, unlike the residents of The Anchorage – all of whom were clearly veteran funeral-goers – did not possess mourning outfits and were self-consciously attired in plums and greys and navy blues. Some of them dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs, others stared very seriously at the coffin lid. They all had the awkward look of over-rehearsed actors.

‘Close family,’ Mrs McCue scoffed, ‘close not being the word I would choose. They weren’t bothered about her when she was alive, I don’t know why they’re concerned now she’s dead.’ Mrs McCue seemed to have taken it on herself to recite the usual obsequial platitudes.

The rain was beginning to take itself seriously now and Professor Cousins opened up his duck-head handled umbrella (try saying
that
quickly) and gathered Maisie and myself beneath it.

Janice Rand had also remembered an old person, but only just, as she arrived rather late and breathless, but nonetheless had a spiritually superior air about her as if she was personally despatching Miss Anderson to her maker.

A sudden gust of wind lifted Professor Cousins off his feet so that I had to reach out and grab his arm to stop him being blown away. That was when I felt the eyes on my back (‘Surely not?’ Professor Cousins said, looking alarmed). My watcher had returned, it seemed. She was standing amongst the old graves of the cemetery, up on the hill, solemnly watching the funeral, like an outcast mourner or an unnoticed ghost. She was partially obscured by the umbrella she was holding but the red coat flared like a signal. This, surely, must be the person whom I felt dogging my footsteps at every turn – or did her life take her to the same unlikely places as mine did? Or perhaps I was being followed by two people – one I could see and one I couldn’t.

My attention was diverted when Mrs McCue threw a handful of claggy soil onto the coffin lid, where it hit with a thud that made Professor Cousins wince (Maisie executed the clawing gesture again for my benefit), and when I looked again the woman had gone.

‘Well, I dinnae ken about you,’ Mrs Macbeth said as everyone started turning their backs on Miss Anderson, ‘but I could do with a nice cuppie.’ Mrs McCue rested on the ground a raffia shopping-basket that she was carrying. On the side of it the words ‘A Present From Majorca’ were worked in different-coloured raffia. It looked as though it weighed a ton and seemed to quiver every so often. An off-white ear poked out of one corner.

‘Janet,’ Mrs Macbeth whispered, ‘aff her legs again.’

‘
Achtung
,’ Mrs McCue whispered as a tall, slim woman approached, ‘
mein Führer
’s here.’

Mrs Macbeth parked her Zimmer in front of the shopping-bag while Mrs McCue translated for me. ‘The matron – Mrs Dalzell.’

Mrs Dalzell had an encouraging, Mary Poppins kind of demeanour and indeed she had the same hairstyle as Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music
(or indeed most of her films) and was progressing rather regally around the graveside, checking on everyone’s happiness or lack of it and inviting the relatives back to The Anchorage for ‘a small tea’.

Unnoticed by Mrs Dalzell, Janet had escaped her shopping-basket and was now making a beeline for Miss Anderson. Mrs Dalzell’s Mary Poppins smile slipped slightly when she saw the dog. ‘Whose dog is that?’ she barked, looking round enquiringly at her charges. Janet had begun to dig furiously at the side of the grave, trying to cover the coffin with earth. ‘It’s your dog, isn’t it?’ Mrs Dalzell said accusingly to Mrs Macbeth. ‘It’s Janet, isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘Have you been hiding her somewhere?’

Maisie ran forward and scooped up the muddy, bedraggled body of the gravedigging dog and said, ‘She’s my dog now. Mrs Macbeth gave her to me.’ Maisie pouted in a way that wasn’t very fetching and did her impression of a little girl, whereas in reality, as we all knew, she was a seventy-year-old woman trapped in the helpless body of a small child.

Mrs Dalzell didn’t look entirely convinced but she started to rally her flock and direct them towards the gates and the waiting minibus.

‘First stop Spandau,’ Mrs McCue said loudly as Mrs Dalzell snapped at her heels.

I followed them out of the cemetery, while Maisie pirouetted down the path. We were just in time to see Professor Cousins being herded onto the minibus. I shouted to him but he didn’t hear and it was Chick who hooked him by his thin elbow and steered him away.

‘If he goes in that place he’ll probably never get out again,’ he said to no-one in particular. Some bizarre sleight-of-hand then proceeded to take place whereby Janet was stuffed back in the shopping-basket and furtively returned to her rightful owner – Mrs McCue and Mrs Macbeth behaving throughout like rather poor amateur actors trying to recreate a Bond movie.

Chick looked at Maisie playing chalkless hopscotch in the rain. ‘I suppose you want taking home,’ he said gruffly to her, ‘whoever you are.’

‘Her name’s Lucy Lake,’ Professor Cousins said helpfully.

We got in the car and set off on the usual narrative detour – betting shops, off-licences, et cetera, even a rather lengthy sojourn for Professor Cousins and Chick in The Galleon Bar of the Tay Centre Hotel which Maisie and I preferred to sit out in the car, playing ‘Switch’ with Chick’s tasteless playing-cards.

Our route to Windsor Place took us past the university, now a hotbed of activity, people coming and going with a restless energy not hitherto witnessed on those premises. A crowd of people had gathered outside the Tower, from the fourth-floor balcony of which a bed sheet had been hung on which, in red paint that looked like blood (but presumably wasn’t), someone had written the words THE TIGERS OF WRATH ARE WISER THAN THE HORSES OF DESTRUCTION.

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Chick said, slowing down as a group of people spilled into the road. ‘Fucking students.’ Catching sight of Maisie in the rear-view mirror, he added, ‘excuse my French.’

‘I’ve heard worse,’ she said phlegmatically. ‘Look – there’s Dad,’ she exclaimed, pointing at a figure standing on the grass outside the Students’ Union. ‘Dad’ turned out to be Roger Lake – fired up, in oratorical mode, shouting and gesticulating for the benefit of a small group of students.

If Maisie carried on much longer with this charade she would forget who she was. ‘He’s not actually your father,’ I reminded her.

‘Really?’ Professor Cousins said to her. ‘And yet you look so much like him.’