Emotionally Weird(48)

The last thing I heard as she closed the door was a high-pitched wail as if someone had jabbed a baby with a pin.

‘I don’t know why people bring children into the world,’ Olivia said. ‘They don’t seem to love them and the world’s so awful anyway.’

‘Have you got an essay on George Eliot, Olivia?’ I asked (rather callously, I can see now).

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t choose that one. I’ve got a Charlotte Brontë if that’s any good to you?’ She was going to say something else but then she started to look uncomfortable and fled towards the toilets. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

I followed her and held her lovely blond hair out of the way for her.

‘Thank you,’ she said politely.

‘Do you want that coffee now?’ I asked, but she shook her head and said she was going home. Olivia lived in a civilized flat on the Perth Road that she shared with three other girls. All four of them knew how to cook and use a sewing-machine and they held ‘dinner parties’ and shared Immac and Stergene and did each other’s hair and cleaned up each other’s vomit when necessary. Olivia had a pleasant room painted dark green, full of nice things like oil-lamps and healthy plants and old embroidered linen from Dens Road market. Olivia sat in her pleasant room and listened to Bach and Pachelbel and worked hard, waiting for Roger Lake to squeeze her into his timetable.

At the back of the Tower a student who sold the Socialist Worker on Saturdays thrust a yellow leaflet into my hand. In crude black letters it said, ‘END THE FASCISM NOW! – All concerned meet in New Dines 6.00p.m.’ A sudden gust of wind caught it and whisked it out of my hands.

Terri was waiting inside, sitting on a sofa in the foyer of the Tower – a warm place panelled entirely in a lovely russet wood, polished to a lacquered finish.

‘I’ve been to the pound,’ she said, looking more downcast than usual.

‘The pound?’

‘The lost dogs’ home. To look for the yellow dog. He wasn’t there though.’

Perhaps Chick had taken the yellow dog to his own home, decided to make a pet of it, but that seemed unlikely somehow. I couldn’t even imagine Chick having a home, much less keeping a dog in it.

We sat in the foyer discussing the dog’s whereabouts right through the two o’clock bell and the general hubbub of people going to lectures and only at ten minutes past the hour could we finally bring ourselves to make our way to Martha’s room.

We were delayed further by Dr Dick haranguing us in the English department corridor about unwritten work and unattended tutorials and only breaking off to declare himself ill. He did look rather sick – his skin as white and waxy as an arum lily – but no more than usual.

‘Do you have symptoms?’ I quizzed. ‘Sore throat? Headache? Swollen glands?’

‘Headache,’ he said hopefully.

‘Pounding, throbbing behind the eyes? Or dull ache at the back of the head?’

He looked unsure. ‘Well, a sort of sharp, piercing pain at the temple.’

‘Brain tumour, then,’ Terri said.

‘Go and lie down,’ I suggested gently, ‘and try not to think about marking essays.’ Luckily he took this advice and went off, clutching his forehead and moaning quietly to himself.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Professor Cousins said, leaping out of his room and doing a little jig in front of me. ‘I was hoping I would see you today,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you about our mutual friend.’ There seemed no point in telling Professor Cousins that it was only an hour or so since he had last seen me since time, as we all know, is a subjective kind of thing.

‘Our mutual friend?’ I queried.

‘The dog of yesterday. And Chick, as well, of course,’ Professor Cousins said fondly. ‘Quite a wag, isn’t he?’

‘We have to go to Martha’s creative writing class now,’ I explained to him; ‘we’re already late.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Professor Cousins said. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what creative writing really is. And does it have an opposite?’ he laughed, manoeuvring himself between us and taking an arm of each as if we were about to do some complicated reel.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Martha said, ‘you’re so late you’re almost early. It’s now twenty minutes past the hour,’ she said sternly, ‘that’s twenty minutes late, if you can’t manage the math. Sitting in again?’ she added sharply to Professor Cousins.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he said. ‘I’m so terribly interested in what you’re doing.’