Carnival Sky by Owen Marshall

returned to the chair. Sheff’s leg was only mildly scathed, but the fabric of his second-best trousers was torn. It was all over so quickly that the dog was back unperturbed at the professor’s feet before Sheff had the chance to retaliate.
    ‘The bugger’s ripped my trousers,’ said Sheff accusingly.
    The professor remained turned away.
    ‘Hey, your dog bit me,’ said Sheff more loudly, leaning in.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Your dog bit me.’
    ‘He’s called Obsidian,’ said the professor fondly.
    ‘He’s torn them.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘The dog ripped my trouser leg, see?’ Sheff raised his voice, and his foot in a clumsy pose as if about to begin a line dance.
    ‘Are you a member here?’ said the old man.
    ‘Oh, come on,’ said Michael, ‘we might as well go. He doesn’t know what you’re on about.’
    Sheff had an urge to give the spaniel, if not Wickham himself, a damn good kick up the arse, but he knew that wasn’t a mature reaction, and hardly appropriate in the lounge bar of the university staff club. It was all right for the professor, too senile to be cognisant, and Michael, who saw amusement in it all, but Sheff was angry. Lately he felt he was experiencing more than his share of life’s passing irritations. ‘Old Wickham’s well past it,’ he said bitterly as he and Michael left, ‘and that bloody dog shouldn’t be in here in the first place. It’s as batty as he is. I should write and complain.’
    ‘Good idea.’ Despite their friendship, Michael would dine out on the incident for some time, with appropriate and increasing exaggeration. ‘Anyway, look,’ he said as they paused before parting at the old lecture hall, ‘I’ll let you know if anything at all turns up. And damn good to see you. Keep in touch.’
    Michael had enjoyed the break from his office, but Sheff wandered off with one trouser cuff flapping at his ankle. A woman would be able to sew it up again, but he no longer had a wife, or partner, and that was a greater grievance. And what about the dog’s filthy teeth: he could get some terrible infection. At the thought, his ankle began to throb. Dettol perhaps. He would bathe it in Dettol.
    In the evening Sheff poached himself three eggs with an incompetence that resulted in three wizened yolks on his toast, and the whites a residual swirl in the pot. The telephone rang while he was having ginger biscuits, brandy and coffee for dessert.
    ‘Hello. Sheff here.’ A pause.
    ‘I know where you live, dude.’ It was a coarse, accusatory voice,male and not one he recognised, and certainly lacking Prof. Wickham’s enunciation.
    ‘So?’ said Sheff. He knew no one who used the word ‘dude’.
    ‘I’ve been watching you, mate.’
    ‘And what’s the reason for that?’
    ‘Never you fucken mind. Just remember not to step out of line again, or you’ll cop it for real. Okay?’
    ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number,’ said Sheff. ‘No P, no tinnies, and not much money here. Just a journo having tea. Sorry about that.’
    ‘Don’t jerk us around again, or you’ll be sorry. That’s all. Don’t pull any of that shit again on us.’
    ‘What shit?’
    ‘You won’t get another warning.’ He sounded as if he’d said about all he was going to, but Sheff ended the call without waiting for a conclusion. There was a story there somewhere, but he had no wish to be part of it. The aspect of randomness seemed to be growing in his life, chinks appearing through which quizzical and enigmatic apparitions could be glimpsed. His ankle throbbed a little, and he wondered if somewhere in the house there was a bottle of Dettol, and if he was right in thinking it had medicinal qualities.
    Later he watched a television documentary about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park, and was cheered by the scenes of winter through which animals fled, or pursued others. They were creatures without ennui, or prevarication. They were unleashed in a passion to kill, or to escape,