The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [87]
“Or maybe he just doesn’t like you,” Dunbar suggested. “He’d not be the first.”
“True enough. But anyway, would you be sitting by your fire twiddling your thumbs, if your work and your livelihood were taken from you, and you had folk coming to your house at night to try to kill you?”
Dunbar grunted.
“Ah,” said Quire, slapping his friend on the arm. “I’m not wanting to talk of it tonight. It’s a bit of drink and forgetting I’m looking for. I thought you’d be the very man for that task. Was I wrong?”
“Not wrong, no,” Dunbar said.
There was renewed levity in his voice. Quire thought it a touch forced, but perhaps not entirely so.
They arrived at Calder’s to find their hopes and expectations abruptly curtailed. Workmen were milling about within, setting up a great clattering and banging. Lengths of coppery pipes were being passed in through the open door from a wheeled trolley parked up in the close.
“That’s a blow,” Dunbar said despondently.
Quire was inclined to agree. The two of them stood, peering in through the windows, at a loss how to proceed now that their den of choice was denied them.
Mrs. Calder herself appeared on the threshold. She smiled apologetically in answer to their silent appeals for guidance.
“There’s to be gas laid up the close,” she said, “so we’re getting all the fittings. Lamps and such like.”
“Gas?” moaned Dunbar. “Place’ll never be the same.”
“No,” Mrs. Calder agreed, “it’ll be better. You should get used to change, young Wilson, since it’ll come whether you like it or not. Do you boys want some feeding, then? I’ve a beef stew with tatties.”
“Aye, all right,” said Dunbar, brightening considerably, though Quire knew the invitation was mainly meant for him.
They passed a fine evening in the Calder kitchen, devouring the hot thick stew and slabs of hard bread, and Mrs. Calder found a mug or two of beer for them to wash it down with. They talked, in the easy, lazy way of old friends, for a long time: about Dunbar’s family; about Cath, and whether or not Quire was good enough for her; about whether there would be money enough to finish that school Dunbar was so proud to be building.
When the plates were empty, and Mrs. Calder chased them out with all the good humour of one satisfied by her evening’s work, Dunbar went contentedly on his way, humming to himself as he disappeared off down the Canongate. Quire climbed the stairs to his rooms in similar buoyant temper. He smiled still, his lips shaping themselves thus without his bidding.
It had been a good day, for all his bodily aches, and for all the intransigence of the problems confronting him. A day of renewed affections, and of hearty eating. Better than most he had known, in his former life, upon the eve of battle.
The Widow
A closed black carriage processed slowly along the road skirting the southern edge of Hope Park. Most folk called it by the simpler title of the Meadows now, this long stretch of open grass, edged and crossed by stately paths that ran between avenues of trees, but Hope Park suited its grace a little better.
It pleased a certain type of Edinburgh resident to promenade there, when the weather was compliant. Many strolled, at a pace fit for contemplation and for the certainty of being observed, along the tree-lined walkways. Couples arm in arm, soft with love; groups of ladies, parasols bobbing like clumps of flowers; men of business or of learning, deep in conversation as often as not. Others took to their carriages and rolled along behind horses groomed to their highest state of beauty.
Most of these carriages went with hoods folded down, their occupants sitting tall, displaying themselves. Not so the black one easing its way round the Meadows. It went along like a great dark molluscan shell mounted on wheels, heavy curtains drawn, secrecy preserved. A more suitable home for it would have been in the midst of a funeral cortège, but there it nevertheless was, in all its brazen sobriety,