I tried to get the manuscript back into some semblance of order but the pages, for some annoying reason, were not numbered so that it was impossible to tell what sequence they should be in and the sense of the text gave me no clue whatsoever. At a loss, I skimmed the page in my hand and discovered J in the process of meeting a nasty death. He was at the top of a flight of stairs when a banister he was leaning against gave way and sent him plunging down into the dark depths of a stairwell —
Falling, falling, into the dark depths of the unknown and unknowable chasm, the abyss of his own imagination rushing to greet him, to enfold, to smother him, the darkness circumscribing him, obfuscating his senses and finally stilling even the faintest glimmerings of cognizance and speculation —
Which I think meant he was dead. There was no knowing where this particular page belonged as Archie was obviously the kind of writer who thought nothing of killing off his main protagonist within the first fifty pages. In the end I just put all the pages back together at random and stuck them as far under the bed as they would go.
Another gust of wind sent a sudden chill shudder through the sleeping body on the bed. I pulled the blanket up further and closed the window—
— How much more sensible if you’d done that to begin with.
I don’t think Nora should talk about sensible, not when she herself is standing on a rock that is being lapped by an incoming tide as if she is trying to command the sea.
— I could just see the bridge from the window — a train was crossing, one bright headlamp marking its passage from the black unlit banks of Fife across the even blacker water, like a messenger from somewhere else. I drew the curtains.
The water in the kettle had almost boiled away by the time I got back to the kitchen and I had to start the tea-making process all over again—
Nora makes a great display of boredom.
— closely observed by the current McFluffy, which was standing up on its hindlegs, holding the bars of its cage in its tiny pink hands. Its cheeks were bulging with food and it looked unusually alert, as if it was about to embark on the great escape. I noticed that the salmon, previously whole and unsullied by anything except death, now had a large bite taken out of its side. It really should be in the fridge, especially as it had another day to go before its party appearance. I could almost see the microbes congregating festively around its silvery corpse. When I turned away from the salmon I found another old woman sitting at the table. Were they breeding?
When this one saw me, she gave a little scream and clutched her breast. ‘Wha’ a fleg you gave me,’ she said. She was as small as a dormouse and almost entirely spherical, you could probably have rolled her from one side of the kitchen to the other. She heaved herself up from the chair, with the help of a walking-aid, and introduced herself as ‘Mrs Macbeth’. I gathered she was Mrs McCue’s friend and a fellow escapee from The Anchorage.
Mrs Macbeth was being followed around by an old fat Westie which seemed almost as lame as its owner. Its fur was a Chinese yellow and it seemed to have gone rusty around the mouth. Its teeth were as yellow as Mrs McCue’s and in some strange way it reminded me a little of her. Its aged eyes — one brown, one slightly wall-eyed — looked at me in a resigned kind of way when I addressed it.
‘She’s cried Janet,’ Mrs Macbeth said. ‘We’re no allowed pets at The Anchorage, but I couldna get rid of her, she’s been my wee pal all these years.’ She sighed and Janet seemed to sigh too, her lungs wheezing like a tiny pair of accordions.
‘So you hide her?’ I asked, trying to imagine the complexities of keeping a small dog hidden.
‘Aye, it’s a rare carry-on,’ Mrs Macbeth agreed. ‘The keech’s the worst thing, of course.’
The pair of them followed me back into the living-room, Mrs Macbeth insisting on carrying a box of Tunnock’s Teacakes, despite being hampered by the walking-frame. The old dog hobbled after her and when Duke caught sight of her he struggled up from the dead dog position he’d adopted on the floor and sniffed poor Janet’s rear end with bizarre enthusiasm.
‘Who is the man in the spare bedroom?’ I asked Maisie.
‘Ferdinand.’
‘Ferdinand? Your brother Ferdinand? I thought he was in prison?’
‘Early release for good behaviour,’ Maisie said, not taking her eyes off the television, which was now showing some kind of curling championship.
‘Irma escaped from Castle Vlad and went home,’ Mrs McCue said helpfully to me. ‘Ferdinand’s a good boy really,’ she added, nodding her old sweetie-selling head at me. Mrs Macbeth’s old dog flopped down heavily on its side and fell asleep immediately, making a strange creaking noise when it breathed.
Mrs McCue inspected the inside of her teacup and frowned. At her feet she had a large sack-like bag, made from some kind of chintzy material. The bag looked as if it contained a dead animal — a middle-sized one, a hyena perhaps — but when she turned it out, proved to contain everything imaginable except a hyena. Eventually she found what she was looking for — a handkerchief, a little lacy thing with bluebells embroidered all over it, and cleaned the cup, rubbing it vigorously with the handkerchief.
‘That woman keeps a clarty house, there’s stour everywhere,’ she said to Mrs Macbeth, who gave a little shiver and said, rather enigmatically, ‘The flair.’
‘I’m an affie tea-jenny,’ Mrs McCue said, pouring the tea in an unsteady stream from the heavy brown pot.
‘Me as well,’ Mrs Macbeth agreed.
‘Why was Ferdinand in prison if he was such a good boy?’ I persisted.
Mrs McCue shrugged. ‘Who knows? That’s a rare cuppie,’ she said to Mrs Macbeth. Mrs McCue was managing to drink her tea, knit and read the Sunday Post all at the same time.
‘Mistaken identity,’ Maisie said through a mouthful of teacake.
Mrs McCue reached into her chintz sack again, and produced a large bag of Iced Gems which turned out to be soft but we ate them anyway. Then she produced a packet of Player’s No.6 and offered them round. ‘I only smoke for the coupons,’ she told me, shaking a cigarette out of the packet for Mrs Macbeth.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Mrs Macbeth said and they both lit up. Maisie coughed theatrically and Mrs McCue delved into the bag again and came up with a packet of Tyrozets for Maisie.
‘A’thing but the kitchen sink,’ Mrs Macbeth said, nodding approvingly at the bag.
As soon as I sat down Goneril leapt back onto me, kneading my chest with her claws. She was an extraordinarily heavy cat — if the Tara-Zanthians got hold of her they’d probably keep her in a safe deposit box. As soon as we were all nicely settled the doorbell rang suddenly (how else?), a simple enough event but one which set in motion an alarming amount of chaos — Duke barked his way to the door, a clumsy process which involved treading on Janet, knocking over the milk jug and sending Goneril in a death-defying leap from my lap to that of Archie’s mother who gave a little scream of horror and dropped an entire needleful of stitches from her erratically woven web. Thank goodness there was no baby to wake up — the usual conclusion to this kind of chain of events.
After all that commotion it was irritating to discover that there was no-one there when I opened the front door. The entire street was hushed and deserted, not even The Boy With No Name, just howling winds and freezing rain.
As soon as I sat down the doorbell rang again. How boring this was.
‘Let me go,’ Mrs Macbeth insisted, heaving herself out of her chair with enormous difficulty and zimmering to the front door. She hirpled back — looking smaller than ever — with a waterlogged Kevin, his hayseed hair plastered to his head by the rain. Since lunchtime he’d developed a huge pimple in the middle of his forehead, like an angry caste-mark.