ferrets – SANDERLINGS

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

The ferret had been living behind the floor-length linen curtains in Janet’s bedroom for two days before Katherine rang with an update on the kidnappers. The ferret, not keen on door buzzers or ringing phones, ran straight up the curtain and swung there, claws through the black-out lining, until Janet was able to shake it down with one hand while scrabbling to answer the phone with the other.

Katherine had news. They needed to meet up. Would Janet be free for lunch the following day? Janet, transfixed by the cleaved curtains that had been made to measure by John Lewis and taken seven whole weeks to order, deliver and hang, nodded in agreement.

‘Are you still there?‘ Katherine asked.

‘Yes, sorry. What time?’

‘Let’s say two, at the Espy.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you OK, Janet?

‘No, yes. It’s the ferret.’

‘A ferret did you say?’

‘Never mind,’ Janet said, I need to go. See you tomorrow.’

Janet didn’t know how to explain the animal to Katherine. It was one thing having a cloud, a kidnapped cloud at that. But introducing a ferret took on a whole new dimension. Janet was in danger of jumping her own shark. Although, if she was completely candid, she’d never quite understood what the expression meant.

She’d visualised it though. Her, out there in the Forth on a summer afternoon, back in her yellow polka-dot swimsuit, her skin salted caramel smooth, her knees bent, her feet strapped onto the water skis, the shark circling, the speedboat captain giving her a thumbs up and a huge squeeze of the throttle. Picking up speed. The wind hosing her long dark hair back from her face. The spray cool and fresh on her bare shoulders. The crowds falling silent on the beach, watching her with crooked smiles, holding their children’s hands too tight, their camera phones high in the air, wanting and not wanting Janet’s jump to fail, the shark to jump, the jaws to snap, the salted caramel limbs to bloody, and disappear, flailing, thrashing, down, down into the brine of the chopped up sea…

Couldn’t she just backtrack? Get back into that queue at the fishmongers and not jostle the young woman who happened to be Amy? Not succumb to vanity and keep her phone number to herself? Not give her contact details, and then open her door, to a gang of fanatics? Just delete the last twenty-one episodes and start again?

No, too much work involved with that. And how could I, the author, yes me, murder my own darlings? But I do need to get this story back on track. This ferret malarkey is taking Janet down a rabbit hole. It may have worked for Alice but Janet is not seven. She’s seventy plus. She needs to focus on Cyril. Cyril isn’t just a bit part. He’s the star attraction. And, at this point in the proceedings, it’s hard to imagine how a curtain-climbing polecat can be of any use at all.

Janet put the phone down on her bed, opened her window wide and leant out. The moon was rising up out of the horizon (had it been in Fife?), slipping in and out of the gappy spread of stratocumulus as it banked left towards Musselburgh.

‘Lacunosus,’ Janet whispered. ‘Finally.’ Was Janet correct in her identification? If so, she’d struck lucky. Lacunosus is a big tick for cloud collectors. Identified by the gaps between the clouds elements rather than the cloud itself, it is fleeting, rare and elusive. Janet smiled. It was a good omen. She was sure of that. She padded through to the kitchen and shredded some ham into a saucer for the ferret.

‘Make the most of that,’ she said as the ferret climbed up her trousers and opened its dainty pink mouth. ‘I have it on good authority that you won’t be around for much longer.’

To be continued.

The Cloud. Episode 28

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

Janet knew that the scrabbling at her door that night wasn’t Cyril. How could it be? Clouds don’t scratch around at the sordid base of things. They’re clean creatures. Verging perhaps on the compulsive obsessive. There’s nothing worse than a dirty cloud. Clouds with silver linings are particularly fanatical. This is why you’ve never seen a cloud scuttling around in filth or detritus.

Clouds hang out in skies for a reason. Skies are unsoiled. The ground, for the most part, is not. Could a cloud open a door, climb stairs, sit on a doormat and beg to get in? Perhaps. But it’s simply not going to happen. No cloud worth its vapor is going to take that sort of risk. No, if Cyril had managed to make his way home he would have appeared outside Janet’s kitchen window, pressing his nebulous maws to the glass, and discharging a few icy sparklers to get her attention. Cyril would be a young man throwing quartz pebbles at the window of his pretty long haired lover. Not a cat with a headless sparrow stripping out another layer of British Racing Green paint on a fire-proofed front door.

So Janet opened the door with a mix of hopeless realism and pointless faith. She looked up before she looked down. The glass cupola was clear. And the ceiling corners had nothing but the feint webbed threads that the spiders spun that everyone in the stair just let alone because there’s nothing worse in a tenement stair than the buzz of an incarcerated bluebottle. Then she looked down.

She half expected to see Hetty. Dear Hetty, with her black patched right eye and her tortoiseshell saddleback. Dear Hetty, who’d snuffled and purred more than fifty years ago as Janet had smuggled her into the ship’s cabin and coddled her under her thin blanket. Dear Hetty, who’d lanced Edwards’ right shin when he’d seen her and gone berserk because how could she, Janet, bring a cat into the cabin when she, Janet, knew Philip was allergic and didn’t she, Janet, have any respect for the dead?

It wasn’t Hetty at the door. It wasn’t even a cat. It was a small, short-haired animal, with a bandit face, a pink nose, and dark curved claws at the end of its dainty paws. Compared to Hetty, it was petite, with a thick black chest and a chocolate-coloured rump. Its tail was black-tipped and waving. It didn’t have a collar. Janet stared down at it. It sat back on its hind legs, raised its two front paws and looked up at Janet. It caught her eyes and locked on. It took Janet a breath or two to work out what it was. She cycled through small animal names. Racoon. Stoat. Weasel. Rat. No, none of these. It was a ferret.

‘What are you doing up here?’ she said to the ferret. The ferret made a soft popping nose, a cork loosed gently from a bottle. It cocked its head to one side. Janet bent down and put her hand down to its head. It rested a paw on her finger. Janet’s stomach loosened. Her shoulders relaxed. She smiled at the ferret. The ferret smiled back. Could a ferret harm a cloud? Janet didn’t know. Didn’t really know anything about ferrets at all. Except that they were dangerous. Aggressive. That they killed rabbits and ate raw meat. But that paw. That little gangster face.

‘You better come in,’ she said, standing up and opening the door wider. ‘I’m about to make some supper. I imagine you’d like some ham.’

To be continued.