Emotionally Weird(75)

Nora takes a deep breath—

~ Abhorrent, blameworthy, catty, dreadful, empoverished (spiritually, obsolete usage), fearless (or fearsome), garrotted (should have been), histrionic, indolent, jadish, karmic (bad), left-handed, mean, negligent, oligarchic, psychopathic, quarrelsome, reckless, sly, tyrannical, ugly (inside), vain, xenoglossiac—

‘Really?’

~ Might have been. (Quite a) yachtswoman, a zombie. The living dead.

‘No redeeming features, then?’

~ No.

‘No saving graces at all?’

~ No.

A bad case of sibling rivalry, it seems. But then Effie was fourteen years old when Nora was born and away at school, wasn’t she? And how did a gin-sodden Marjorie and an ageing Donald manage to have another baby, even an ‘afterthought’?

‘Go on, carry on with your unlikely tale.’

~ Effie grew up, eventually. Got married, got divorced (twice), died. End of story.

‘You can’t do that.’

~ It’s the post-modern day and age. I can do what I want.

My mother is not my mother. Her sister is not her sister. Lo, we are as jumbled as a box of biscuits.





Chez Bob





‘You’re back!’ Brian’s voice boomed out of the depths of The Crab and Bucket.

‘I haven’t been anywhere, you daft pillock,’ Madame Astarti said, fighting her way past the draped fishing nets and glass floats that made up the interior decor of The Crab and Bucket – or The Crab as it was known affectionately by the locals. It was the kind of pub that holidaymakers went into thinking it looked authentic and interesting (it smelt of raw fish) and hurried out of again without even having put glass to lip. This was not so much on account of the gloomy green underwater lighting or the dead stuffed fish in glass cases around the wall, as the unwelcoming hostility of the natives. If Custer had had The Crab and Bucket’s regulars on his side he would have lived to stand another day.

Madame Astarti did not even have to glance in the barman’s direction – a melancholic man called Les (or Les Miserables, as the locals called him behind his back) – for him to put out a glass and start filling it with a large measure of gin and a token splash of tonic.

‘I,’ Brian said cheerfully, ‘have been to hell and back.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, you’ve been shopping in Scarborough with Sandra,’ Madame Astarti said, heaving herself onto a bar stool next to Brian. ‘Where is she anyway?’

‘On her way,’ Brian said, plunging his face as far as he could into his glass and inhaling beer fumes. A little spasm of pain crossed his face and he said, ‘Left my ruddy arch supports out.’ Madame Astarti commiserated with him. ‘Ah, Rita,’ Brian said, ‘why didn’t I marry you instead?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have you,’ Madame Astarti said and gave him a sharp rap on his knuckles with her–

—what? Her fan-shaped wafer-biscuit? Her crystal ball? Oh dear God, this was so tiring. I was developing some kind of fever, one of those hot and cold things. I took two paracetamol and went to bed with Bob’s blue teddy-bear hot-water bottle and read The Indian Uprising . Then I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew Bob was lying in bed beside me, claiming to have spent the night in The Tavern – a particularly debauched student watering-hole – which was strange because Shug had telephoned from there an hour earlier asking if I knew where Bob was.

‘If Alice comes,’ Bob said earnestly to me, ‘and either Bernard or Charles comes, Dotty will show up. Bernard and Edward will either both come, or both stay away, and Alice will put in an appearance if and only if Charles and Edward are both going to be there. So Dotty won’t be there if Alice isn’t.’

‘Bob, what are you talking about?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, ‘given the premises of the above –

a) Could all five people come? Could only four come, and if so which four? Could three, and if so which three? Could two, and if so which two? Could one, and if so which one? Could none of them come?

b) In what circumstance will Alice come?

c) Whose absence will be sufficient to ensure the absence of Bernard?

d) Is it possible for Bernard to come without either Alice or Edward coming?’

I was asleep by then, of course.

Madame Astarti’s head was throbbing. She peered into the dregs of her glass suspiciously. She had a hangover already and she hadn’t even finished drinking. There was a man once, long ago, who had tried to spike her drink in an effort to sell her into the white slave trade and since then she had felt you should be as alert as possible when getting drunk. Not that it was likely that anyone was after her for the white slave trade any more.