Emotionally Weird

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘I think I’m going to faint,’ Andrea murmured.

  * * *

  The lecture theatre disgorged its students. Kevin came trotting purposefully after Andrea and, tagging her by her milking sleeve, said breathlessly, ‘I ought to clear something up, the dragons don’t have psychological complexes, Oedipal or Electrical or any of that stupid stuff. The dragons are all female, you see.’

  ‘How do they breed, then?’

  Kara wandered out of the lecture theatre. She smelt earthy as if she’d just been dug up. Her long lank hair was corralled in a headscarf and she was wearing black wellingtons and a cotton dirndl skirt and had a streak of mud – or worse – on her cheek. She had the musty, unappetizing scent of chicken feed and camomile flowers on her.

  ‘Don’t forget your baby,’ I reminded her, although you wouldn’t think you could, would you? Nor should you.

  Terri caught up with me and said she was going to go and find Chick and ask him what he’d done with the yellow dog. She was followed out of the lecture theatre by Olivia, warily side-stepping Kevin with whom Andrea was still wrestling over the illogic of Edrakonia. ‘But if the dragons are immortal and Griddlebart isn’t, why don’t they just wait until he dies and then take over again?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Kevin said loudly as if Andrea was deaf, ‘it’s a matter of honour, not simple expediency. Honour amongst dragons is—’

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ Olivia said to me. She was wearing a high-necked velvet dress that had little velvet-covered buttons that ran from throat to hem so that if you’d wanted to split her open you would have had a handy score mark to follow. She looked pale and otherworldly, like someone who usually lived in a ballad and was expecting to be accidentally locked in a kist on her wedding-day or abandon her goosefeather mattresses and run away with a band of gypsies—

  ‘Effie?’

  ‘Yeah, right, coffee—’ but we’d failed to notice the bulky advance of Maggie Mackenzie until it was too late. Terri said, ‘Got to see a man about a dog,’ and disappeared with commendable alacrity.

  ‘George Eliot?’ Maggie barked at me like a sergeant-major.

  ‘Nearly finished,’ I lied.

  ‘Don’t lie, Miss Andrews. Where is it?’ I gestured vaguely towards the world outside the walls of the English department, indicating that my George Eliot might have been working away in the library or playing table football in the Union.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said peremptorily and turned on her heel and raced off towards the lift so that I had to run to keep up with her.

  ‘Later,’ I gasped to Olivia. In the lift itself there was barely enough room for the two of us and I tried to shrink myself into a corner to avoid having to breathe in Maggie Mackenzie’s inky scent.

  I followed her into her room, where she paraded up and down her crowded bookshelves, swiftly pulling out books here and there and handing them to me, a Casebook series on Middlemarch, a Literature in Perspective on George Eliot. ‘These are not difficult books,’ she said, ‘they won’t task your brain too much.’ She made a visible effort to be encouraging. ‘You have to try, you’re wasting your life.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said without any conviction.

  ‘You haven’t produced a single piece of work all term,’ she said harshly. Maggie Mackenzie was one of those people who believe that there’s nothing in the world that can’t be done with the application of a little effort. (I suppose she was right.) I glanced down and noticed that the hem of my recycled-sari skirt was loose and torn, some of the little mirrors on it hanging by a thread. I was so clearly a girl who was never going to get her homework in on time.

  ‘You hardly ever show your face in tutorials,’ she continued. ‘It’s all very well enjoying yourself now, but in twenty years’ time—’

  A ragged and uncoordinated chant had started up outside:

  ‘What do we want?’

  ‘Peace!’

  ‘When do we want it?’

  ‘Now!’

  ‘It’s beginning,’ Maggie said with some satisfaction.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The end.’

  ∼ Not yet, surely? Nora says. Nothing’s happened yet.

  ‘Well, I must get this essay finished,’ I said, making a surreptitious move to leave the room, and Maggie Mackenzie startled me by suddenly shouting, ‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together, girl – before it’s too late! What do you think’s going to happen to you?’

  I expected I was going to grow old and die, or, if I was unlucky, just die, but I didn’t say that to her because it wasn’t what she wanted to hear and instead I mumbled something inarticulate and she grabbed the nearest missile she could lay her hands on – a copy of Cranford, although I don’t think the choice of book was significant – and threw it across the room at me. Her aim was, as usual, poor, the throw executed more in exasperation than aggression, and Cranford hit the back wall of her room, dislodging a rather frightening Frida Kahlo print. If it had been Philippa McCue throwing she would have hit me smack between the eyes and then caught the rebound off Frida.

  ‘I want that essay on my desk at ten o’clock on Friday,’ Maggie Mackenzie said sharply, ‘or else. You’ll thank me for this later, you know.’

  I doubted that I would, but I kept quiet as there was no point in antagonizing her further, and at least she seemed to be giving some thought to my future which was more than anyone else was, including myself.

  As I hurried away I heard an odd lowing sound coming from Martha Sewell’s room. I paused to listen and detected more animal noises, followed by some distressed sobbing. I hesitated outside her door, and then knocked.

  It was opened by Jay Sewell. Behind him I could see Martha sitting at her desk. She was wearing a grey poncho that seemed to have been made out of felted squirrel fur and was holding her hand to her forehead in an attitude of despairing grief.

  ‘We lost Buddy,’ Jay explained.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said politely. Buddy had been sick a couple of days ago and now he was dead. It seemed a rather sudden demise. I still didn’t understand who Buddy was, of course.

  ‘We have no children of our own,’ Jay said, tears welling up in his eyes, ‘and Buddy was like a son to us.’ I didn’t really want to be this intimate with the Sewells and the sight of a distraught Martha, not hitherto prone to any emotion at all, was unnerving. Jay had somehow manoeuvred me into the room by now and at the sight of me Martha started sobbing even more. I put out a reluctant hand and patted her on the shoulder and said solicitously, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  She stood up suddenly, knocking me to one side, and shrieked at her husband, ‘We have to find him, we have to find Buddy.’

  ‘He’s not dead, then?’ I asked cautiously.

  Martha looked at me in horror. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘What does Buddy look like?’ I said hastily. ‘Maybe I’ve seen him.’

  ‘He’s very handsome,’ Jay said.

  ‘And he has beautiful blue eyes,’ Martha added, calming down a bit and dabbing delicately at her nose with a tissue.

  ‘Well, green, really,’ Jay corrected gently.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Martha said, ‘they aren’t green. Perhaps a hint of green,’ she conceded. ‘Aqua might be a more accurate word. I could compromise on aqua.’

  Jay didn’t seem willing to compromise. ‘Not aqua exactly,’ he said frowning, ‘cerulean maybe.’

  ‘Cyan,’ Martha offered, like a bridge player making a last, rather outrageous, bid.

  ‘Cyan?’ Jay said contemplatively. ‘How about glaucous?’ Whoever Buddy was, he was going to have crumbled into dust before Jay and Martha managed to decide on the colour of his eyes.

  ‘Let’s just say bluey-green, shall we?’ I suggested helpfully.

  ‘Greeny-blue,’ Jay Sewell said, making a final stand.

  Professor Cousins put his head round the door. ‘I heard a commotio
n. Is there anything I can do?’ He caught sight of me and smiled and said, ‘I would introduce you, but I can’t remember your name.’ He laughed at Jay. ‘I can’t even remember my own name, let alone hers.’

  ‘Cousins,’ Jay said seriously, ‘your name is Cousins.’

  ‘I was joking,’ Professor Cousins said, somewhat abashed.

  ‘They’ve lost Buddy,’ I explained. ‘He’s like a son to them. And he has bluey-green, greeny-blue eyes.’

  ‘And a gorgeous coat,’ Martha said.

  ‘A Crombie? I had a Crombie once,’ Professor Cousins said nostalgically. ‘It was gorgeous.’

  Martha wasn’t listening, she was growing lyrical. ‘It was like melted milk chocolate. We almost called him Hershey,’ she added sadly.

  ‘Really?’ Professor Cousins said politely.

  ‘A little light-hearted fun,’ Jay said solemnly.

  ‘You could ask the Salvation Army,’ Professor Cousins said. ‘I’m told they’re very good with missing persons.’

  Jay and Martha turned to look at him. ‘Buddy’s a dog [or dorg],’ Jay said carefully.

  ‘A pedigree Weimaraner,’ Martha elaborated.

  ‘Weimaraner,’ Professor Cousins said, ‘as in Weimar Republic?’

  ‘I’ve got an essay to do,’ I said, beating a quiet retreat.

  ‘Keep an eye out for Buddy,’ Jay shouted after me and I heard Professor Cousins murmur, ‘Oh, what a horrible idea,’ as I shut the door behind me.

  Detour

  I finally managed to escape from the English department and into the cold and inadequate daylight of the real world. I had got as far as The Grosvenor pub on the Perth Road when I realized that someone was kerbcrawling me. When I stopped, a familiar rusting shape drew to a halt alongside me and the passenger door of the Cortina opened. ‘Want to go for a hurl?’ Chick asked.

  I demurred; the Cortina looked as if it was actually decomposing now. Chick, too, seemed to have deteriorated since I last saw him.

  ‘Go on, get in,’ he said in a way that he must have thought persuasive. Getting in a car once with him was foolishness, twice might have been from necessity, but to get into the Cortina a third time was nothing short of lunacy.

  ‘I’m supposed to be doing an essay on George Eliot,’ I said, climbing into the cold, smelly car.

  ‘Oh yeah, who’s he?’ Chick asked, pulling away from the kerb in a nasty grinding of gears.

  ‘She’s a woman.’

  ‘Really?’ Chick said. ‘I knew a woman once called Sidney, she worked as a stoker on the White Star line, can you believe that?’

  A greasy fish supper sat on the dashboard. ‘Chip?’ Chick offered, holding up something cold and limp. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said to himself when I waved it away. He ate the chips as he drove. ‘How’s the Prof? Nice guy, that. And the Yank?’

  ‘Terri.’

  ‘That’s a man’s name,’ Chick said.

  ‘She’s not a man.’

  Chick finished his poke of chips, threw the paper out of the window and wiped his hands on the knees of his trousers. We were covering Dundee in an apparently random fashion on a route that took us along the Hawkhill and up the Hilltown and then back to the Sinderins and the Hawkhill again. This route took us to a newsagent, two different betting shops, a phone-box, an off-licence, a slow, mystifying drive past the Sheriff Court and a short tour of the docks. I noticed Watson Grant coming out of one of the betting shops. ‘Look,’ I said, giving Chick a dig in the ribs because he was absorbed in reading his Sporting Life (although, interestingly, still driving the Cortina), ‘there’s Grant Watson.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Watson Grant, you’re working for him, remember? Following his wife?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Chick said, ‘he couldn’t pay his bloody bill. Mr middle-class university lecturer,’ Chick said with some disgust, ‘he’s a bloody compulsive gambler.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why his wife’s having an affair,’ I said, remembering Aileen Grant’s rather sorrowful features.

  ‘Bet your bottom dollar she’ll leave him,’ Chick said, ‘then he’ll be in a real pickle.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Insurance policy,’ Chick said, ‘on his mother-in-law.’

  ‘Mrs Macbeth?’

  ‘You know her?’ Chick said suspiciously.

  ‘So, Grant Watson has an insurance policy on Mrs Macbeth?’

  ‘No, his wife has one on her, what’s-her-name?’

  ‘Aileen.’

  ‘Aileen, she’s got the insurance policy, but it’ll walk when she walks.’

  ‘I think I see. If Mrs Macbeth died now, or indeed if Aileen Grant died now, Watson Grant would get the money. But if Aileen divorces him he won’t get any money when Mrs Macbeth dies?’

  ∼ I like this exposition, Nora says, everything being explained in black and white, you should do more of it.

  ‘Yes, but,’ Chick said, ‘in black and white terms—’ but we were interrupted by his dropping his burning cigarette into his lap and narrowly avoiding a lamp-post that was ‘in the way’.

  * * *

  Everything Chick did seemed invested with suspicious intent, although much of his behaviour was probably harmless. He stopped off for a ‘pish’ in the public conveniences in Castle Street. He went to Wallace’s for the classic Dundee take-away – a plain bridie and ‘an inginininaa’ (‘an onion one as well, if you would be so kind’). I declined one. After driving through the Seagate Bus Station – to the extreme irritation of a driver trying to reverse a huge Bluebird bound for Perth – we paused near the gates of the High School where a torrent of pupils was emerging from its dark neo-classical portals.

  A tall pretty girl separated herself from the mass and walked towards the car. She had cropped dark hair and was so very neat and tidy in her public school grey that I felt I should offer to write out lines, ‘First impressions can never be made twice,’ and so on. She was carrying a huge briefcase of homework and wearing the yellow hoops of a prefect on her blazer sleeve.

  Chick rolled down the window as she drew nearer and I wondered if I shouldn’t shout out a warning, especially when he took out a packet of Polos and offered one to her. Chick looked exactly like the kind of person who starred in public information films about not taking sweets from strangers. The girl took the mint, bent down, kissed Chick on the cheek and said, ‘Thanks, Dad,’ gave him a little wave, and carried on walking.

  I was astonished. ‘That was the “mingin’ little bastard”?’

  ‘One of them,’ he said gruffly, driving off in a horrible grinding of gears. He drew level with the girl and said, ‘I suppose you want a lift?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Chick said, ‘because I’m not a bloody taxi service.’

  The girl laughed.

  ‘You must have quite weak genes,’ I said to Chick.

  * * *

  Our next port of call was a funeral parlour in Stobswell, where we settled into what I now recognized as surveillance mode, that is to say, Chick stubbed out his cigarette, folded his newspaper and closed his eyes.

  ‘Is there anything you want me to keep an eye on?’ I asked him, and felt an absent and invisible Professor Cousins give a little shiver of horror.

  ‘Just anything fishy,’ Chick said. Within seconds he was snoring.

  * * *

  No-one came or went and nothing fishy occurred, I reported when Chick woke up again.

  ‘Right, we’d better go and have a look, then,’ Chick said, heaving himself out of the car.

  I followed him into the funeral parlour, where we were greeted by a businesslike undertaker. What a shame Terri wasn’t with us, she would have thoroughly enjoyed this kind of visit. Undertaking was probably the perfect profession for her. The bland atmosphere in the funeral parlour would have disappointed her, though – it felt more like the Haze-freshened front office of a plumbers’
supplies merchant than a house of death.

  ‘Come to see the deceased,’ Chick said to the undertaker.

  It turned out that the funeral parlour was affording temporary shelter to several deceased and Chick was unsure which one he was visiting. ‘The one from The Anchorage,’ he tried. The undertaker was polite but wary and it was only when Chick flashed his defunct warrant card that we were finally allowed to visit our chosen corpse.

  ‘This had better not be anyone I know,’ I warned Chick. I had never seen a dead body, never known anyone who had died—

  Nora begins to count the dead on her fingers again, and I tell her to stop. She shrugs. She is drying the wet hanks of her hair in front of a fire made from sappy green wood salvaged from the beach.

  We are waiting on a supper of potato soup to reach a semi-edible state and are passing the time by drinking some strange liquor which Nora has been concocting in a home-made still.

  ‘From?’ I ask dubiously. The drink looks and smells like the bottom of a stillwater pond.

  ∼ Kelp.

  The thin light of the fire is our only illumination tonight. There is no electricity here, of course. It went dead a long time ago. We are conserving our resources for we are down to our last few candles and have only one can of paraffin left. We need supplies but the seas are too heavy for the little Sea-Adventure. Nora’s seamanship is extraordinary and unexpected – she can row the little boat for miles without tiring, she can navigate by the stars, she knows every eddy and tide and current of these her home waters. All the years we lived by the sea I never once saw her on the water. Where did she learn about boats?

  ∼ From my sister, she says, she was a water-baby.

  Beautiful Effie who drowned on the day I was born? How do water-babies drown?

  ∼ With some difficulty, Nora says grimly. You’re in the funeral parlour, she reminds me, like someone trying to change the subject, you’re about to see your first dead body—