‘Be quiet.’
—a woman called Jill , who had a three-year-old daughter called by a Gaelic name that no-one was ever quite sure how to pronounce once they had seen it written down. Jill sat down next to Kara who had stopped breastfeeding in order to start rolling an enormous loose joint of home-grown grass.
‘You don’t have a George Eliot essay by any chance?’ I asked Jill. She gave me a rather disparaging look and took out a tin of Golden Virginia, which she opened to reveal a layer of tiny neat joints packed in like sardines. ‘I’m a Law student actually,’ she said, prising one of the tiny joints out of the tin.
Gilbert had set about – with much banging and clattering of pans – to cook some kind of meal. This might have been lunch, it might have been dinner, I couldn’t really say – it was so very dark outside that it was impossible to tell what time of day it was and I had lost all track of time by now.
Kara inhaled on her joint as if her life depended on it. Every so often a seed exploded like a tiny pistol-shot and sent a glowing red spark skittering across the table or onto an inflammable piece of child’s clothing (which is also how accidents happen). Jill and Kara exchanged their joints. They had embarked on a heated discussion about the age at which you should stop breastfeeding. Jill favoured two years old while Kara thought you ‘should let them decide for themselves’. A decision she might live to regret when Proteus was a thirty-year-old civil servant commuting daily from Tring.
At that moment a small child lunged into the room and gave a bloodcurdling scream. I jumped up in alarm – the cry was so ghastly that for a moment I thought it must be on fire and was searching for something to throw over it. No-one else in the kitchen seemed moved by the noise, all except for Terri who stuck a surreptitious foot out and tripped the child up. It ceased the noise abruptly and I recognized it as Jill’s daughter.
‘If you’re hungry you’ll have to wait,’ Jill said to her. The child unearthed a plastic potty from under the table and threw it across the kitchen.
‘Don’t forget we’ve got to kill the goat,’ Gilbert said, casting a doubtful look over a wrecked Kara. In the hierarchy of Balniddrie – although pecking-order might be a more accurate term – Kara was the unacknowledged leader. The goat to be killed, it transpired, was a little billy-kid because, Jill explained, ‘Billy-kids are no use for anything.’
‘I didn’t know we got executed if we weren’t of any use,’ Terri said. ‘I didn’t realize usefulness was the criterion by which we lived or died.’ (Quite a long sentence for Terri.)
‘We’re not talking about people, we’re talking about goats ,’ Kara said.
‘Goats, people – what’s the difference?’ Terri said, looking as if she was about to stab Kara with her parasol.
‘It’ll be a humane killing,’ Jill said in an attempt to mollify Terri. ‘Miranda’s going to do it, she’s the—’
~ Excuse me, Nora says, but where is Kevin? Have you forgotten he’s in the kitchen?
Kevin, who had been remarkably silent until now (unlike Nora), was helping Gilbert to peel potatoes and carrots in a slow, ham-fisted way. He popped the top of a can of McEwan’s and said, ‘That’s what animals are for , they exist so we can eat them. In the great kitchens of the Palace of Calysveron there’s always an animal roasting on a spit – hares and rabbits, capons, a fine hart, a wild boar, a great ox for the feasts.’
‘That would be a real place, would it?’ Jill scoffed. ‘The Palace of Callyshite?’
‘Calysveron,’ Kevin corrected her. ‘Real as anything else.’
‘Real as this table?’ Jill quizzed. Kevin scrutinized the table as if he was thinking of buying it and finally said, ‘Yes, as real as this table.’ This dialogue would have gone on longer and grown more tedious (although the premise was interesting) if the child hadn’t set off round the kitchen again, at the same hectic pace as before and yet again screaming for dear life. This time it made a beeline for the Aga and was saved at the last minute from immolating itself by a modified rugby tackle from Gilbert. Perhaps they could substitute the girl for the goat in whatever Satanic ritual they were planning for later. A kid for a kid.
Before the Murk got any Murkier, and before we had to face whatever nightmarish repast Gilbert was preparing to serve to us, Terri and I decided to take a tour of the outside. Terri was still holding onto a lingering hope that the dog might be somewhere about. We visited the garden but there was little to see; the combination of endless winter and poor husbandry meant that nothing was growing in it apart from a large crop of dandelions, the few valiant remains of Jerusalem artichoke stems and some poisonous water hemlock that had colonized the burn at the bottom of the garden.