Emotionally Weird(93)

If only Ferdinand were here right at that very moment he could take me masterfully in his arms and I could wilt under the smouldering gaze of his soulful, troubled eyes. He could trace the outline of my face with his surprisingly gentle fingers – perhaps smile wolfishly – and bury his face in my hair and say in a smoky voice, ‘No woman until now, Effie, has—’ Proteus started to go purple in the face and I realized he was choking on something. I patted him on the back as hard as I dared but he still couldn’t breathe.

In desperation I held him upside down by his ankles and shook him. Thankfully, this extreme measure succeeded in dislodging a wad of paper like an owl pellet and Proteus gave a reassuringly hearty roar of distress. When he’d calmed down I unwound the pellet and discovered a particularly delirious page of Philippa’s dialogue. The Wards of Love really ought to carry a health warning.

When I took Proteus back downstairs I discovered that Professor Cousins was trying to get everyone to play ‘a word game’ which seemed to owe quite a lot to Martha Sewell. He caught sight of me and said, ‘Not The And – you know that game, don’t you, dear?’

The thought of Martha made me feel suddenly stricken with guilt about Terri. By Philippa’s kitchen clock it was now a quarter past one. Terri must surely be awake by now (although perhaps not) and wondering if Hank aka Buddy had gone AWOL.

‘You take three words,’ Professor Cousins was explaining, ‘and you try and make a sentence from them. For example fish ,’ he bowed courteously at the ruins of the salmon, ‘ table and, um, let me see, erythrophobia .’

‘Erythrophobia?’ Mrs Macbeth said tentatively.

‘Fear of blushing,’ Philippa declared.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Maisie said.

‘So . . .’ Sheila Lake said doubtfully, ‘the salmon on the table had erythrophobia. Is that right?’

‘Exactly!’ Professor Cousins said enthusiastically.

‘What a stupid game,’ Lucy Lake remarked.

‘Can we stop this?’ Heather sulked, but was ignored by everyone.

‘Another one,’ Mrs McCue demanded.

‘Well . . . cat,’ Professor Cousins said, catching sight of Goneril slinking into the kitchen, ‘beetroot and . . . kazoo.’

‘Well, that’s more of a challenge,’ Philippa admitted, but then Mrs Macbeth gave a little screech of alarm as Goneril jumped up on the table and deposited a limp McFluffy in front of her.

‘Jings, crivens and help me Boab,’ Mrs Macbeth exclaimed.

Some drama ensued – Maisie administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Mrs McCue producing a bottle of Macintosh’s smelling salts, and so on, but in the end the unfortunate creature was pronounced dead.

‘There’s no keeping them,’ Philippa sighed. ‘They’re as bad as lemmings.’

Maisie was sanguine about the sudden demise of the latest McFluffy and had already started explaining to Professor Cousins the complexities of hamster heaven, which was a branch of rodent heaven (rather full thanks mainly to the McCue household), itself a division of small mammal heaven, and so on.

‘And hamster heaven,’ Professor Cousins asked, absent-mindedly stroking the silken fur of the little corpse, ‘does that have further sub-divisions – Russian, Golden, Dwarf, and so on?’

‘Dwarf?’ Mrs Macbeth queried quietly but Professor Cousins had already embarked on another game. ‘You take a word of five letters,’ he beamed, ‘“novel”, for example, and then you must find something beginning with each letter – n-o-v-e-l – in each of the following categories – a town, a river, a flower, a writer and a composer. For example – Nottingham, the Nile, nasturtium, Nabokov and, um, let me see – a composer beginning with “N”?’

‘Luigi Nono,’ Philippa said.

‘Who?’

‘He wrote Il canto sospeso ,’ Philippa said, ‘a spare, rather enigmatic work, in 1955, followed by Intolleranza in 1960. Quite controversial, interested in social issues, influenced by Webern.’

‘How about Ivor Novello?’ Mrs McCue suggested.

‘Much better,’ Professor Cousins agreed. ‘So – let’s see, a five-letter word, what about “basil”? The herb rather than the man—’

‘What man?’ Sheila asked.

‘Well, any man,’ Professor Cousins said. ‘Any man called Basil. Effie – that is your name, isn’t it?’ I nodded. ‘Why don’t you start?’

‘Me?’

‘Start with “B”,’ he said encouragingly.

‘Why not “A”?’ Mrs McCue puzzled.