Emotionally Weird(39)

‘That’s some plook you’ve got, son,’ Mrs Macbeth complimented him.

‘Thank you,’ Kevin said, slightly confused. He blew his nose to cover his awkwardness – a large trumpeting noise that unsettled the already too-twitchy cat – and then sat his acreage of flesh down heavily in an armchair (which is just how small rodents are unwittingly killed). Maisie strained to watch the progress of a curling-stone across a television screen that was being partly blocked by the bulk of Kevin’s body.

‘I came to talk to Dr McCue,’ Kevin said, inspecting the contents of his handkerchief.

‘He’s not here.’

‘I can see that.’

Like everyone else of my acquaintance, Kevin was looking for an extension on the deadline for his dissertation (on The Lord of the Rings , naturally). ‘I’ve been spending too much time in Edrakonia,’ Kevin said, a look of wistfulness passing over his face at the very mention of the place. The spot in the middle of his forehead glowed. ‘The dragons have been mustering their forces for a spot of counter-insurgency.’

‘The dragons?’ Mrs Macbeth echoed, glancing warily around the room.

‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured her, ‘only Kevin can see them.’ Kevin was eating Iced Gems by the handful, in a mindless way that would have disturbed Andrea.

‘Explain something to me,’ I said to him, because, to my irritation, I took a strange interest in Edrakonia. ‘I can’t understand whether the dragons are good or bad.’

‘Well,’ Kevin said earnestly, ‘historically, the dragons of Edrakonia do have their own system of ethics, but you have to remember, of course, that it’s a school of moral philosophy of an essentially dragonish nature and the ordinary mortal – you, for example – wouldn’t recognize it as containing the simple tenets of “good” and “bad” which, for dragons, are—’

‘OK, Kevin, that’s enough.’

For some reason Mrs McCue and Mrs Macbeth got quite excited when Kevin told them he was ‘a writer’ and started urging him to read something to them. Kevin always carried his writing around with him, bits of papers like talismans.

‘Well,’ he said doubtfully, ‘I’m in the middle of a chapter, and it’s the fourth book, so I don’t know if you’ll understand what’s going on.’

‘It disnae matter,’ Mrs Macbeth said, ‘the beginning, the middle, the end – it makes no difference.’ She would do well in Archie’s class.

‘Just fill us in quickly,’ Mrs McCue encouraged, ‘you know – characters, a wee bittie plot and we’ll soon get the hang of it.’

‘Is there going to be a moral to it?’ Mrs Macbeth asked.

‘Well, everything’s got a moral,’ I said, ‘if only you can find it.’

Kevin hesitated.

‘Just begin at the beginning,’ Mrs McCue coaxed.

‘And carry on until you’ve finished,’ Mrs Macbeth added.

After a short resumé ( And the Murk will fall on the land. And the Beast Griddlebart will roam the land and the dragons will flee ), Kevin settled down and began to narrate in a portentous tone, undermined somewhat by the clotted cream of his accent: ‘Duke Thar-Vint of Malkaron mounted his steed Demaal and prepared himself mentally for the long journey. His trusty steward Lart rode beside him on one of the sure-footed shaggy brown ponies bred by the horse breeders of the Mountains of Galinth—’

‘Are the mountains a good place to breed horses?’ Mrs McCue asked thoughtfully.

‘Well, it’s a good place to breed sure-footed ones,’ Kevin said irritably. ‘Can I continue?’

‘Aye, on you go, son.’

‘Lart had helped his master, Thar-Vint, to strap himself into the bronze armour that had been handed down, father to son, father to son, by the Lords of Malkaron—’

‘Is that grammatical?’ Maisie asked, although she had given no indication of listening at all, having now become absorbed in a late-night Gaelic teaching programme, silently mouthing the inscrutable vocabulary.

‘I don’t know,’ Kevin said impatiently. ‘Thar-Vint’s thoughts strayed to the great palace of Calysveron and the Lady Agaruitha to whom he was secretly betrothed, despite the objections of her mother the Lady Tamarin—’

‘Lady Agga who?’ Mrs Macbeth said.

‘Agaruitha – A-g-a-r-u-i-t-h-a.’

I wondered how much time Kevin devoted to making up these ridiculous names. Quite a lot, I suspected. (Or, on the other hand, not much time at all.)

‘My lord,’ gasped a man who had ridden up hastily by his side. Thar-Vint recognized him as the Lord Vega, whose lands stretched from the River Voloron to the provinces of Celentan and Ggadril. The Lord Vega doffed his velvet cap with the single plume of feather and spurred his steed away to—’