A History of Forgetting by Caroline Adderson Read Free Book Online

its muzzle.
    â€˜Denis? Will you wait right there?’
    He didn’t seem to hear. Anyway, Malcolm would be able to keep one eye on him from inside the store. Another customer ahead of him, he had to wait. Then the fish seller turned to Malcolm and, clapping his hands together, said, ‘Have I got a beaut for you today.’
    He beckoned Malcolm over to the far case where, on a bed of crushed ice, next to a jumble of smiling clams, the eel lay, slick and black with an ostentatious ruff of gills. ‘A dandy,’ Malcolm agreed.
    â€˜Close to five pounds,’ said the fish seller and he whistled a long downhill note.
    â€˜Nothing smaller?’ asked Malcolm.
    The man looked disappointed. ‘I thought you’d go crazy for it.’
    â€˜Wrap it up then.’
    He lifted the thing out of the case by the ruff and carried it dangling to the scale. ‘Four and three­ quarters.’
    â€˜Christ,’ Malcolm said.
    Paying, he saw from the corner of his eye the owner of the dog untying it from the parking meter, but by the time he’d got his change and left the store, Denis was nowhere to be seen.
    Next door was a lingerie shop, which seemed a logical place for Denis to have stepped into. ‘Did a man come in here?’ Malcolm asked the woman sorting brassieres on hangers.
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜Just a second ago. Smallish with silver hair. A lock hanging in his eyes. Gorgeous, really. Doesn’t ring a bell?’
    She started to laugh.
    He entered every shop, every café on that side of the street and asked if Denis had been in. It seemed impossible that a man who paused again and again for bearings he would never retrieve could have got very far. Yet he was gone, vanished.
    â€˜He was carrying a loaf of French bread and had a crocus in his lapel.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜He would have been speaking French.’ They all shook their heads.
    Then he couldn’t be on the avenue. Probably he’d wandered off down a side street, most likely following the dog. As soon as Malcolm realized this, he stopped looking for Denis and began searching for the dog, for the yellow flag of its tail. He retraced his steps back to the fish store, turned down the closest street, walking fast. He would get a dog for Denis. Why hadn’t he got one before?
    At the corner, he stopped to ask a man digging in his garden if he’d seen it.
    â€˜A golden Lab?’ He shrugged. ‘Lost? That’s too bad.’
    Lost, but really, was there any need for Malcolm to be sweating so profusely, for his heart to be in his throat? They would be used to wanderers in a neighbourhood home to so many elderly. What was the worst thing that could happen to Denis? True, he could be hit by a car, but more than likely he’d charm his way into someone’s kitchen. Probably he was this very moment asking where they kept the lard.
    He kept looking for the yellow dog, looking, and after he had walked up and down for an hour he went back home and called Yvette.
    No one answered. She would, he remembered, be breastfeeding the judge.
    He phoned the police and in thirty minutes they returned his call. ‘We’ve got your man,’ the officer chuck­led, ‘but we can’t seem to convince him to get into the car.’
    â€˜I’ll be right there,’ said Malcolm. ‘Are you far?’
    They were barely four blocks away, on the train track, sitting on the rail. In his lap, all that was left of the baguette was the heel.
    â€˜What in the world are you doing?’
    Denis couldn’t answer. He seemed completely dazed.
    â€˜You’ve gone and eaten all the bread!’ chided Malcolm.
    â€˜Non, non. I was feeding the pigeons.’
    He took Denis’ arm, helped him to his feet and thanked the officer who seemed bemused by the scene.
    â€˜Need a lift home?’
    â€˜We’ll walk.’
    They made their slow way back, in silence, beside the tracks. Soon