2019, Portobello. Edinburgh
You don’t call the police for the kidnapping of a cloud. Or the RSPCA. Or the RSPB. Especially not the RSPCC. Janet perched on the tall stool in her small kitchen and stared out at the clouds high above the sea. They were marble white, piled on top of each other, scudding east, pushed along by the westerly that blew in from the Atlantic. He couldn’t possibly be up there. Not yet. Cyril had been gone for two hours. And she hadn’t even be able to get herself together to go out into the streets to look for him.
They’d be long gone those fit young things. Those kidnappers. Perhaps they’d let him go straight away, watching him drift upwards like one of those horrid Chinese lanterns that kill dolphins and cows and even horses. Or perhaps they’d shaken him out of his box up Carlton Hill and fanned him up towards the sky with their second-hand corduroy jackets. They didn’t understand that he wouldn’t survive. That he’d been bred, well made, in captivity. How would he withstand the high winds of the troposphere? What would he make of his feral cousins, the mare’s tails? Janet couldn’t bear to think of it. She dropped her gaze to the beach.
The stormy weather hadn’t stopped the sea swimmers. A tall woman was walking back and forward along the edge of the water, speaking on her mobile phone. She looked animated, excited even. Janet lifted her binoculars from the window sill and had a closer look. The woman was wearing a black two-piece swimsuit, a yellow woolly hat with a large pompom, and black swimming boots. She had a look of authority about her, the power to give barking instructions even when she was half-naked and pink-skinned with cold. Janet followed the woman with her binoculars until she disappeared out of sight. She would have liked to have been that woman. Maybe she was once. She put the binoculars down and felt around the sagging skin of her upper arms. Pinched the folds through her thin soft woollen cardigan. The woman on the beach wouldn’t have arms like hers. And if she did, she probably wouldn’t care. She’d flaunt them to the whole world.
Janet wanted to know the woman’s name. Ask her the secret of her self-assurance. Ask her how to get a kidnapped cloud back. She got up from the stool and went through to the bathroom. Looked at the Cyril shaped space above the shower head. Put her hand down to touch the few drops of water still beading across the wooden floor. Cyril’s fighting tears. She would do it. She would ask that woman. She pulled on her coat, pushed her red hand-knitted hat over her thin hair, took her keys, and went down the stairs. The woman must still be on the beach. And if she was in the sea, Janet would just wait. They never swam for long. And there was only an hour or so of daylight left.
To be continued.
SANDERLINGS 