Emotionally Weird(87)

Hank raced off before I could collar him, scampering like a puppy along a path leading up to the Mills Observatory. Being a naturally good-mannered animal, he paused every so often to allow me to catch up with him. The cold was raw and chafing, there was no sunshine to make the snow pleasant in any way, only a wintry greyness cast over everything, including the sleeping dead.

I followed Hank up to the Observatory and then down the slopes of the cemetery where the dead of Dundee – the whalers and spinners and shipwrights, the weavers and bonnetmakers, the sea-captains and the engineers – were all waiting patiently under the grass for a day that might never come. Was my father sleeping in a cemetery like this? Perhaps he lay in a pauper’s grave somewhere. Perhaps in a shallow grave of leaves and twigs. Picked clean by the little fish at the bottom of the sea. Or mere dust scattered to the wind?

~ Who knows, Nora says.

‘So – he might be alive.’

~ Maybe, Nora admits with a sigh.

And my genuine mother as opposed to the fake whose company I keep. ‘Dead, I suppose?’

~ Very.

Is there anyone in the world that I am related to by blood?

Hank pushed his cold nose impatiently into my gloved hand to encourage me to move. I stroked his lovely velvety pelt and smelt his warm meaty breath.

He led me back to the entrance of the park and sat down patiently for me to put on his collar and lead, but just as I was about to buckle his collar a car drove up and pulled to a halt as if it was being driven by a stunt man and the familiar and over-excited figures of the Sewells clambered out. They were dressed for the weather, Jay in a windbreaker, Martha in Morland boots, an ankle-length sheepskin and a large fur-trimmed hat. Martha spotted the dog and stood rooted to the spot, screaming his name, while Jay ran towards us, skidding and sliding on the icy pavement and finally falling in an undignified heap in front of a very excited Hank and a not so excited me.

Martha hurried towards us as fast as the snow would allow her, taking little baby steps to avoid falling on her skinny derrière, crying out all the time, ‘My baby, my baby boy.’ Jay hauled himself to his feet and surprised me by catching me in a bear hug, jamming my face into his windbreaker so that I could smell the sweet, almost feminine smell of his aftershave and the breath freshener he was sucking.

‘Oh my God,’ he said, releasing me, ‘how can we ever thank you? Anything you want is yours, Edie.’

‘Effie.’

Anything I wanted? A fatted calf? A chest of treasure dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, brimming over with ropes of pearls, opals like bruises and emeralds like dragons’ eyes? A father? Ferdinand? A degree? But there was so much strung-out emotion fogging the air that it seemed too cold and calculating to request any of these things. Jay wiped a hand across his eyes and said to Martha, ‘Let’s get this guy home,’ while Martha, who now had tears streaming down her face, said in a rusty voice, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy in my life as I am at this moment.’

Words failed me.

But not for ever.

I stood and watched the happily reunited family drive away, the Sewells’ car fishtailing on the icy surface of Pentland Avenue. I still had Hank’s collar and lead in my hand and a couple of other hardy dog walkers gave me curious looks as if I was walking an invisible dog. I stood for a long time getting colder and colder, wondering what to do, and finally, because I couldn’t think of anything, I took my invisible dog for a walk in the park.

Eventually I headed home. I couldn’t find the courage to tell Terri that I had lost her dog. What chance was there that I could somehow get hold of another identical Weimaraner before Terri noticed that the original one was missing? Or perhaps I could employ Chick to re-kidnap Hank? Perhaps – most unlikely of all – Martha and Jay Sewell could find it in their hearts to come to some kind of custody arrangement with Terri.

These impossible thoughts were clouding my brain as I ploughed down Blackness Avenue through the icy grey slush that the snow had now become. On the Perth Road I was hailed by Professor Cousins, wearing strange rubbery overshoes and a red scarf tied around his head like a child or someone with an old-fashioned toothache. I could almost imagine that he had mittens on ribbons threaded through his sleeves.

I lent him my arm as he was slipping and sliding all over the pavements in an alarming way.

‘No sand on the pavements,’ he observed cheerfully, ‘that’s how accidents happen, you know.’ Perhaps Professor Cousins had become magically attached to me in some way – like a mitten on a ribbon – and I would have to spend the rest of my life entertaining him. I supposed there were worse ways to spend a life.