Emotionally Weird(79)

‘He’s burning up, poor lamb,’ Olivia said, putting one of her cool, pale hands on his forehead. ‘I’d better take him out of here.’ The union   was full of noise and smoke which probably wasn’t good for a baby and certainly wasn’t good for me so I followed her out.

‘Thanks, anyway,’ Olivia said, ‘you’re a real friend,’ which made me feel suddenly guilty because I didn’t really think of us as friends.

‘See you,’ she said.

Maisie was hanging around outside the main door of the union   in full school rig. ‘There you are,’ she said in the exasperated tone of a much older female.

‘Why – had we arranged to meet? And shouldn’t you be at school?’ I asked as I followed her down the road.

‘Yes to both questions. Come on, we’ll be late.’

A feeble shout directed us to the slight figure of Professor Cousins, trotting towards us along the pavement as fast as he could. ‘Hello there,’ he gasped. I sat him down on a bench at Seabraes to recover and we contemplated the view of the railway goods yards and the Tay (which today was dull pewter) until he got his breath back.

‘We have to go,’ Maisie said.

‘It’s Dr Lake’s daughter, isn’t it?’ Professor Cousins said to her. He started clicking his fingers. ‘No, don’t tell me, the name will come to me in a minute.’ He twisted his whole body in an outlandish effort to remember.

‘You mean Lucy,’ Maisie said.

‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed.

‘We’re going to be late,’ Maisie said, growing more impatient.

‘Are we going somewhere nice?’ Professor Cousins asked hopefully.

‘No.’



Chick gave me a cursory nod of acquaintance over Miss Anderson’s open grave. He was in Balgay cemetery with his funeral face on – somewhere between a bloodhound and Vincent Price – solemnly witnessing Miss Anderson’s interment. The grave was amongst the new ones at the foot of the hill and a bitterly chill wind was blowing so that the minister’s garments billowed around him and I feared he would take off like a dandelion head if he wasn’t careful. It began to spit with rain and the Tay dulled to a leaden colour.

‘Wouldn’t it be horrible if she wasn’t dead?’ Maisie whispered to me in a thrilled voice, after peering into Miss Anderson’s new, rather muddy, home. ‘Imagine waking up and finding yourself in a coffin. Buried alive,’ she added with some relish, and made clawing motions with her hands, presumably in imitation of a corpse trying to escape although she looked like she was miming a demented cat. Several of the assembled mourners cast anxious glances in her direction.

‘She is dead, trust me,’ I hissed, remembering Chick’s macabre penknife test.

‘Dear Lucy,’ Professor Cousins said affectionately, ‘she’s quite the little ghoul, isn’t she?’

Mrs McCue, at whose invitation Maisie was present, although heaven knows why – some kind of initiation rite into womanhood, probably – put a restraining hand on the bony shoulder of her granddaughter who, in her enthusiasm, looked to be in danger of falling into the open grave. Mrs McCue was wearing her funeral hat – black felt with a brim – that she had tied onto her head with a Rainmate.

Professor Cousins gave Chick a cheery wave. He seemed to be enjoying himself. There were quite a few other mourners, considering that Miss Anderson was supposedly a crabbit wee wifie. Mrs Macbeth, naturally, had accompanied Mrs McCue along with a minibus of Anchorage residents.

‘Like a day-trip in a charabanc,’ Mrs McCue said disapprovingly. ‘It’s not as if any of them liked her.’

‘Neither did you,’ Mrs Macbeth reminded her.

There was a small knot of relatives of the deceased who, unlike the residents of The Anchorage – all of whom were clearly veteran funeral-goers – did not possess mourning outfits and were self-consciously attired in plums and greys and navy blues. Some of them dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs, others stared very seriously at the coffin lid. They all had the awkward look of over-rehearsed actors.

‘Close family,’ Mrs McCue scoffed, ‘close not being the word I would choose. They weren’t bothered about her when she was alive, I don’t know why they’re concerned now she’s dead.’ Mrs McCue seemed to have taken it on herself to recite the usual obsequial platitudes.

The rain was beginning to take itself seriously now and Professor Cousins opened up his duck-head handled umbrella (try saying that quickly) and gathered Maisie and myself beneath it.

Janice Rand had also remembered an old person, but only just, as she arrived rather late and breathless, but nonetheless had a spiritually superior air about her as if she was personally despatching Miss Anderson to her maker.