Emotionally Weird (29 page)

I craned my neck to get a better view – she was right, it was Dr Dick on the stretcher. His carcass was wrapped in a red blanket that made him look even paler than usual, did indeed make him look rather dead. I got out of the car and went over to his limp form. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

‘Do you know him?’ one of the ambulancemen asked.

‘Sort of,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘What happened to him? Was he injured in the demonstration?’

‘What demonstration?’ the ambulanceman said, looking round. He spotted the banner and read out, ‘
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of destruction
– what does that mean?’

The ambulanceman, although quite short, was young and had sandy hair and kind eyes and the capable manner of all men in uniform.

‘What does anything mean?’ I said, smiling at him. He smiled back.

‘Excuse me,’ Dr Dick said, struggling into a sitting position, ‘am I going to expire here in the street while you flirt with this . . .’ he struggled to find the right word, ‘this
girl
?’

The ambulanceman looked at Dr Dick and said mildly, ‘You seem lively enough for someone who’s expiring.’

‘A very professional diagnosis,’ Dr Dick said sulkily, flopping back onto the stretcher.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked him again. ‘Were you caught up in the protest?’

Dr Dick squinted at me unattractively. One of the lenses in his little academic spectacles had acquired a crack, giving him an oddly glaikit look. His eyelashes were pale and rather stubbly, like those of a pig. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. He seemed reluctant, however, to explain how he had ended up on the stretcher and it was the ambulanceman who finally told me that Dr Dick had slipped on an icy pavement and cracked his ankle bone. He grimaced, although I wasn’t sure whether this was from the pain in his ankle or the unheroic nature of his injury.

‘You’re not the only one who can control the weather.’

‘Thanks,’ Dr Dick said. He motioned me closer to him and hissed in my ear, ‘I think I was pushed. I think someone tried to kill me.’

‘Pushed off a pavement?’ I repeated incredulously. ‘Wouldn’t they have pushed you off something higher if they’d wanted to kill you?’

‘Hop in,’ the ambulanceman said to me. I hesitated.

‘Do. Please,’ Dr Dick said weakly.

I was trying to think of a good reason (although really I had several) not to go in the ambulance when Chick suddenly drove off in a great crashing of gears, hooting noisily as he overtook the ambulance.

‘What a tube,’ the ambulanceman said.

Maisie waved cheerfully at me as the car sped by. I recalled the image of the yellow dog being driven away in much the same manner and wondered what the chances were of Maisie arriving home.

‘Thank you,’ Dr Dick murmured to me, ‘you’re a good girl.’

‘What are you after today, Rita?’ Lolly said, wringing her hands together like a woman with a dreadful secret even though the expression on her face was one of extreme, almost excessive, cheerfulness.

‘Small white farmhouse, please,’ Madame Astarti said and then laughed and said, ‘maybe I should go to an estate agent’s for that?’ but Lolly just looked at her blankly with a fixed smile on her face.

‘Never mind,’ Madame Astarti sighed.

‘And a bit of a treat for elevenses?’ Lolly said, and together they conducted the ritual of surveying the trays of iced fancies and cream cakes.

‘Jam doughnut?’ Lolly said. ‘An Eccles cake?’ The thin strain of a slightly wobbly whistle could be heard coming from the back. It sounded to Madame Astarti like ‘Oh Mein Papa’. She’d never thought of it as a frightening tune before.

‘Chelsea bun?’ Lolly went on, a mad look on her face. ‘Chocolate eclair? Iced teacake? Cream puff?’

‘Excuse me,’ she said, her accent hard and tight, South African perhaps, or Rhodesian; ‘I wonder if you can help me – I’m looking for my daughter?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Effie.’

‘No, I’m Effie,’ I said. I was beginning to feel sick. It was too hot in the hospital, like an overheated greenhouse.

The woman laughed but in a strangled, off-key kind of way and it struck me that she might be insane.

I struggled to make sense of her. ‘You’re my mother’s sister, Effie? You’re dead,’ I added, rather impolitely.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not her sister.’ But then a nurse walked briskly up to me and said, ‘You can go in and see your dad now if you like.’

‘My dad?’ I repeated, bewildered. The woman began to walk away, her too-high heels stabbing the hospital linoleum. ‘Wait!’ I shouted after her but she had already pushed her way through the swing doors and disappeared.

I felt weak, as if I was going to faint. I was probably the one who ought to be admitted to a ward, not Dr Dick. (But who would I put as my next of kin? My mother is not my mother. Her sister is not her sister. Her father is not her father. My father is not my father. My aunt is not my aunt. Et cetera.)

‘Cubicle three,’ the nurse said.

Of course I knew it was Dr Dick in cubicle three not my anonymous father choosing a bizarre location in which to come back from the dead, but for just a moment, as my hand went out to draw the curtain back, I felt a little shiver of excitement. If it was my father lying there what would I say to him? More importantly what would he say to me?

Dr Dick was examining the cast on his ankle. ‘I’m sure it’s not the only thing that’s broken,’ he complained without even looking at me, ‘and they wouldn’t listen when I told them I was tachycardic, they could at least have run an ECG. And I banged my head, how do they know I haven’t got concussion?’

‘Did you tell that nurse you were my father?’ I interrupted him.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Dr Dick said indignantly. ‘I’m not even old enough to be your father, although I feel it,’ he added, lying back on his pillows. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘My head hurts,’ he said again. I had to admit, he did look exhausted. I felt an unusual twinge of pity for him and reached out and clasped one of his hands in mine. He smelt of Savlon.

‘You’re a good girl,’ he murmured. Like all hypochondriacs, Dr Dick was distressed at finding he actually had something wrong with him and ended up making such a fuss (‘Is he often hysterical?’) that the junior house officer on duty decided it would be easier to keep him in overnight than it would be to persuade him to go home.

I was shooed away by a nurse with a bedpan who whisked the curtains around the bed with great theatricality as if she was about to perform a disappearing trick on Dr Dick. I hung about for a minute, unsure what to do until the nurse suddenly popped her head through the curtains and said, ‘This might take some time. Don’t worry,’ and then added, with routine cheerfulness, ‘we’ll take good care of your dad.’

It felt very late, although the clock in reception only said nine o’clock.

‘Bye,’ the receptionist said indifferently, ‘take care now.’

(You must forgive the eagerness of my mother (who is not my mother). Remember – she is a virgin. Not to mention a murderess and a thief.)

The snow was beginning to settle thickly and most of the traffic had stopped but I could just make out the yellow headlights of a car, moving slowly towards me along the Lochee Road. The car was almost obscured by the snow as it slewed to a gentle skidding halt on the other side of the road. It was a Wolseley Hornet. The driver’s window rolled down and Ferdinand’s handsome features resolved themselves out of the white kaleidoscope of snow.

‘Hop in,’ he said, in a curious echo of the ambulance-man earlier in the evening. Here was excellent good fortune.

The Hornet presented a perfect contrast to Chick’s Cortina. Its new-smelling interior was warm and its little engine chugged manfully through what was now a raging blizzard. It even had a tape-deck fitted on which John Martyn’s ‘Bless The Weather’ was, fittingly, playing.

Ferdinand seemed somewhat edgy. He hadn’t shaved recently, which made him look older and more dangerous. His eyes, I was relieved to see, were green and the dark hollows beneath them hinted at sleeplessness and the criminal in him seemed more evident than before. His navy-blue Guernsey, I noticed, was spiked with needles of coarse yellow dog hair. There was sand on the floor of the car and the slight brackish scent of the seaside that I knew only too well.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked. He sounded hoarse as if he had a sore throat and I offered him a Strepsil, which he declined.

‘So?’ Ferdinand asked, tapping his hand impatiently on the steering-wheel.

‘So?’ I repeated absently.

‘So where do you want to go?’

‘Anywhere.’

He gave me a funny look so I narrowed it down to Terri’s address in Cleghorn Street as we were already quite near there and it successfully removed the Bob factor from the me–Bob–Ferdinand equation.

As we drove, Ferdinand kept glancing warily in the rear-view mirror but there were no other vehicles on the road, even the buses had stopped running. I tried to make polite small talk with him although he seemed distinctly taciturn, if not downright moody. He did, however, finally volunteer the information that he was out prowling the streets looking for a dog.

‘Yellow mongrel, rather sanguine temperament?’ I hazarded.

‘How did you know that?’ he asked, looking at me in amazement. His eyes narrowed and his face grew menacing. ‘You’ve not been following me, have you?’

‘Of course not, Ferdinand,’ I said.

‘How do you know my name?’