Emotionally Weird(41)

Mrs McCue laughed and said fondly, ‘Archie disnae have the balls for murder.’

‘Look at poor Senga,’ Mrs Macbeth said, shaking her head.

‘Face like a tatti-howker, but a harmless wee wifie,’ Mrs McCue said.

‘Do you really think she was murdered ?’ Maisie asked, a thrill of excitement in her voice, but at that crucial dramatic moment we were interrupted (naturally) and the noise of the front door being unlocked set in train the usual commotion of barking dogs, hissing cats and dropped stitches. Mrs McCue cocked her head like a dog, behaviour that was mirrored by Janet, and said, ‘That’ll be them,’ so that for a moment I thought perhaps she meant her imaginary assassins until reality took a grip and I realized it was Archie and Philippa, home from the Dean’s.

Duke lumbered to the door to greet them, while Maisie fled and threw herself under her bedcovers, feigning a child who had been asleep for hours, watched no television, eaten no sweets and done all her homework. The rest of us conducted a charade of sober purposefulness – I took out a pen and furrowed my brow while Mrs McCue managed to add a stitch or two to her mysterious weaving and Mrs Macbeth produced a yellow duster from about her person and rubbed hard at a lamp on the small table next to her chair.

Philippa went straight upstairs while Archie, glassy-eyed with drink, fought to get himself through the door-frame of the living-room.

‘Good to see you’re finally getting down to some work at last,’ he said to me. He frowned at his mother. ‘Still here?’ he said. ‘You’ve missed the last bus, you know.’

‘Aw, son,’ Mrs McCue said affectionately.

Philippa clacked downstairs in her clogs. ‘Sleeping like a baby,’ she announced.

‘Who is?’ Archie asked, looking vaguely alarmed as if Philippa might have given birth to yet another McCue while she was upstairs.

‘Ferdinand,’ Philippa said, in the tone of voice she reserved for people incapable of doing compound-propositional logic. ‘How was the old Ma?’ she asked me, as though Mrs McCue wasn’t in the room. ‘And her friend,’ she added, giving Mrs Macbeth a doubtful look. Mrs Macbeth spat on the duster and rubbed hard at the lamp as if she was conjuring up a genie.

‘Must be going,’ I said hastily. Much as I would have liked to learn more about the handsome jailbird sleeping upstairs I felt I’d had enough for one day somehow.

‘Come and see us,’ Mrs McCue said. Mrs Macbeth nodded vigorously in agreement with this invitation. ‘In our jile,’ Mrs McCue added with relish.

‘The Anchorage is a very nice place,’ Philippa said to me. ‘It came highly recommended by Grant . . . or Watson . . . or whatever – the old Ma’s friend over there is his mother-in-law.’

‘Dozy wee bugger that he is,’ Mrs Macbeth agreed cheerfully.

Mrs McCue and Mrs Macbeth seemed far too sprightly to be in an old people’s home but as if she read my thoughts (a terrifying idea) Philippa said, ‘They’re not as capable as they look, you know. They’re always having accidents. The old Ma’s forever falling and breaking bits. We thought we’d get her in before she started to deteriorate.’

‘Thanks,’ Mrs McCue said.

Mrs Macbeth and Mrs McCue waved to me from the doorway of the living-room. After a struggle, Mrs Macbeth had hoisted Janet up in her arm and was now waving her paw for her like a puppeteer. Archie accompanied me down the hallway, taking up most of the space, so that I had to squeeze past him to get to the front door. He usually chose the hallway as the locale for the obligatory pass he made at all female students who strayed within the walls of his domain. Tonight it was a half-hearted affair that I managed to side-step quite easily due to the night-long transfusion of red wine into Archie’s veins.

It was a relief to get into the outside air although an evil kind of sleet was now falling (which is a cold, hard rain by another name). The Perth Road was completely deserted but it was only a short distance home and I was comforting myself with the fact that at least there was electricity when all the street lamps went out. Then, all of a sudden, I began to feel apprehensive. I was all gooseflesh and was overcome by a strange sense of dread, as if something malevolent was about to befall me in the shape of apparitions or ghosts, mad people and axe-murderers. I quickened my pace.

A woman was walking towards me, carrying a long furled umbrella and wearing a red winter coat that had been leeched of most of its colour by the darkness. There was something about the woman that was both familiar and foreign, as if she reminded me of someone. There was something odd about her too – a slight stumble in her walk, a lopsided look to her face. As she drew near, she called out and asked me the time. She was close enough for me to smell the gin on her breath, almost doused by the strident perfume she was wearing.