by J. Thorn
Stepping off that train, we were greeted by a whole new world - at least that’s how we saw it. The differences between Edinburgh and London at the turn of the century were so many that only the sprawl of buildings made it the same. There was just as much squalor and dirt about the place, but the architecture was something completely different. I am by no means an expert at buildings, but I think you might agree that there is something in the architecture of a city that gives it its character, its personality. London always said to me ‘I’m busy’, whereas Edinburgh smiled and said ‘welcome’.
The next day we took a carriage and toured around some of the more tourist-friendly parts of the city, and then lunched on Princes Street. We saw the Scott monument, and the Ross fountain, and then finally, before we retired to our hotel, Marie suggested that we take a walk along the canal. It was still quite early in the day, and the weather was very fine, so I agreed.
That walk along the canal was to be the last time I spent with my wife.
I noticed a change in the weather almost as soon as we stepped off the coach. There was a slight chill in the wind that hadn’t been there all day, and for the first time in our visit I buttoned up my coat, and suggested Marie do the same. We agreed with the driver that he should meet us about half a mile along the canal. He said he knew a good spot to wait. We didn’t know the area, but there was only a single pathway running along the edge of the water, so it seemed a simple enough arrangement.
The water was darker along this stretch of canal than I had seen elsewhere, and the trees cast shadows over the water that moved with the ripples. It was slightly cold, but we soon warmed up when we started walking.
I remember vividly that all along the edge of the canal was a mass of bright blue flowers, all no bigger than a few inches tall, and the flowers very small, but the area they covered spread out along the water's edge like a huge blue lawn. I also remember thinking how pretty they were, and how unusual it was to see them grow along the edge of the canal, and remain untouched. No one had seen fit to clear the area. I wondered what those flowers were called. Marie had a name for them, but I can’t recall it now. It's strange how I have forgotten that.
We were about halfway along the walk when it happened, and I’m still not sure to this day if I can explain any better to a stranger than I could to the local police, and then after that the local magistrate.
It was quite simple really. We were talking about what our plans would be when we got back to London. I had decided I would take up an offer that had been made to me, to work as a training accountant for one of the big city lenders that a friend of mine was a worked for. I wasn’t so keen on the idea, but I knew the work would be easy and it would pay well. Most men coming back from the war wouldn’t be quite so lucky.
Marie was walking just behind me and to my left, just a little further away from the canal. The mass of blue flowers had spread out thicker along that small stretch of the bank, and she insisted we didn’t step on any of them, so we walked single file for about fifty yards. Or we would have done.
She had started telling me how she thought that she would do well to go to work in the ladies' hair salon that was just around the corner from our home. At that moment we were about ten yards from the end of our single-file walk, and she disappeared, just like that. One moment she was there, and the next, she might have never existed.
I had seen her from the corner of my eye, and every few yards I glanced back just to check that she was okay. I was turning my head towards her, to do just that, when she simply vanished right before me.
There was nowhere for her to have fallen, nowhere for her to have quickly ducked behind to hide if she had wanted to play a little fun with me, and there wasn’t even the slightest of sounds. All that was left behind was her scarf, the one I had bought for her from the market in London a few weeks ago. It had been wrapped tightly around her shoulders at the time, but now it drifted slowly to the ground to settle upon those blue flowers.
It took me a little while to comprehend what had happened. Well, maybe comprehend isn’t the best of words, because I don’t think I ever really understood what or why. I guess I mean that it took me a while to realise that she hadn’t simply hidden somewhere. She was gone.
I ran the distance left between the spot and the driver, not thinking to pick up the scarf on the way, and came back with him scurrying along behind me. He was an overweight man, and it was quite clear from the way he was sweating and coughing his lungs up that running was not something he was used to.
The scarf was still there, and there was still no sign of my Marie. Even her footprints in the grass ended with her right foot forward and nothing in the other direction except the trail of her footprints that led back in time to the moments before, when she had been here, walking beside me.
We raised the alarm, called in the police to find out what was going on, and they arrived quite quickly…in droves. By six that evening I was in a cell at the police station, and by eight I had been officially accused of murdering my wife. They expected to find her when they dredged the canal. I tried to point out to them that she had only been gone a short while, but I got the impression they didn’t believe a word I was saying.
As I sat there alone in that cold damp cell at the police station, waiting to hear something from the search, I was almost hoping they would find something. Had I just not heard the splash as she had fallen in the river? I don’t believe that was it. She had been at least three yards from the edge of the water. But if she turned up dead in there, then I at least would know it was just a moment where I missed something.
They never did.
Not a single shred of evidence was to be found to say she had fallen in the canal and they searched nearly three miles of it. They tore up those beautiful blue flowers, and dug over the area, but there was nothing to be found of my Marie.
So they released me. One of the officers in charge of the investigation wanted to charge me with wasting police time, and suggested that Marie had never even been there, but the driver of the coach accounted for her, and there was very little else they could do. Except give me back the things they found at the spot where she had vanished.
The scarf was the first, then a gentleman’s pocket watch, a small key ring with a pretty silver dolphin inscribed on it, a wedding band made of gold, a single brown leather glove, and a half-empty packet of cigarettes with a flint cigarette lighter stuffed into the packet as well.
Does that list sound strange to you? No, you might believe they were just some of the other things she might carry with her, except Marie never smoked, not once in her life, and she didn’t much like the fact that I did either. She also didn’t like leather, and she carried her keys in her purse, never on a key ring, and the wedding ring that I had bought for her was plate silver. We just couldn’t afford something as extravagant as a gold ring.
And what about that watch? Well, the time had stopped at four fifteen, which could well have been about the time that she disappeared, except that the watch was rusted and damaged beyond repair. I know this because I took it into a repair shop, back on the Prince Street, and they told me the thing was at least forty years old. The company that made them went out of business twenty years ago. I wouldn’t even be able to find the parts to fix it without paying a fortune to have them hand-made.
Do you see where I’m going with this? Well if not then let me spell it out to you. That place where Marie disappeared, I went back there two weeks later, and I went back there again for days after that, searching, always searching for that lost lady who should have been by my side.
Do you know how long it took me to find something? It took me two years. Two long years of hunting the streets of the city and walking the canals to find any sort of lead on what had happened. Oh I knew what those other things that were found insinuated, but I had to find something else. And then I did, right on the spot where she had disappeared in the first place.
It was a cold morning in December, and
for some reason I decided to walk the same route that we had taken that day, all around the sights that we had visited that day. I even had lunch in the same cafe, and took a carriage out to the canal, telling the driver to meet me down the road. Everything just as it had been back then.
In the two years that had passed a lot of the area had grown over again. The police had stripped it all in their search, but it hadn’t taken long for the same plants to push their way up from hiding, including those blue flowers.
I knew exactly the point where I had lost my Marie. I felt the same chill down my spine that I had felt the second that I had seen her disappear. I stepped over the spot where two years ago her footprints had ended, and into the space that she never reached. And I found something.
Lying amongst the flowers, almost out of sight, was a single hair pin. Just like the ones that my wife used to wear, only this one was a little more elegant and expensive than one that she could have owned.
Once more I noticed a set of footprints in the mud, ending at exactly the same spot that Marie’s had. And I knew my worst thoughts were right. Someone else had gone to wherever it was that my wife had gone, just as those other people had, each one leaving something behind, maybe something given to them recently, that hadn’t been theirs long enough to stay with them.
I know exactly what you are thinking, and don’t you think I tried following her? I walked backwards and forwards on that spot for hours, and for the first few months I came back there day after day. And now my suspicions were confirmed. I did all that over again, just hoping that the door was still open, that I could step through, and follow those footprints, even though I had no idea where they might lead.
After two years I was at the very edge of my sanity, and in the end I broke on that canal bank. I had lost everything I owned in pursuit of Marie - the rent on the flat in London had run out, and the job that I had been offered was given to someone else. I had the rest of our money sent to Edinburgh, and as each day went by, the funds grew smaller and smaller.
When I eventually stood up and walked away from the canal bank for the final time, I walked away carrying everything I owned - Just the clothes I was wearing, my empty wallet, and a single return ticket to London that I hoped was still valid. There was a time for searching for Marie, and there was also a time to stop, but I didn’t recognise it until I had lost everything in search of the impossible.
I caught the next train back to London, and I have never been back to Edinburgh since.
The second time I returned to Gallowshill was in the summer of 1926. Joe’s Caff had shut down months before, and I hadn’t seen anything of him for a long time.
Over the years following the war, Gallowshill had turned from a thriving new community into a den of thieves, homeless people and thugs. Everybody who had nothing seemed to end up there, taking from others around them who had just as little. Poor soldiers came back from the war, and with nowhere to go, they looked for places to work, and often found themselves in Gallowshill. It deteriorated over just a few years and had gradually become one of the last places you should be at such a late hour.
I didn’t intend to be walking through for more than a couple of minutes. But that was enough.
I was just coming off the bridge and walking into Gallowshill on my way to the baker’s house along the Thames when it happened. I wasn’t paying attention, and by no means should I have been walking down that alleyway at that time of the night by myself. Maybe in central London I was safer, but not there. I guess I still hadn’t learned that many lessons, and was still a little naive.
I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head for just a moment, and then everything went dark. I awoke what I believe was a couple of hours later, with my boots, coat and hat missing and my wallet, even though it was empty, taken too. I had bled quite a lot, and was lucky to even still be breathing.
Struggling to stand, my head thumping from the pain, I staggered round the corner, along Casey Street, to the only place nearby that I thought I might be able to sit in peace for a moment: Joe’s Caff.
It was closed, but the key to the back door was where it had always been left, in the guttering just above the back window.
The lock was stiff, probably rusted, but with a bit of effort I forced it open and staggered into the darkness of the old smoking room.
Where once the room had been plush and tidy, filled with oak tables and old leather chairs that Joe had bought cheap from a pub that was closing down a few streets away, there was now just a pile of rubbish and broken bottles. The door into the front shop had fallen off its hinges at some point, and now lay in the middle of the room, a wide split down its centre.
The place was a mess, and I stood there for a few moments, shaking my head, unable to believe that all of the work we did all those years ago, tidying up, cleaning, laying tiles and decorating, had all come to this, to nothing but ruin.
Pulling the door shut behind me, I hunkered down on one of the few remaining chairs. It sat legless on a pile of mouldy carpet just to the right of the entrance, the leather torn and frayed, cotton stuffing spilling out onto the floor.
When I came back from the war with Joe, I had high hopes for a life that would change, and for a few years they had. Joe had his coffeehouse, his Caff, and I had my Marie. All of that had gone now. Here I was sitting in the ruin of both of our dreams, with no boots, no wallet, nothing, and everything that I had of importance in my life was now gone.
I stayed in the Caff for a couple of days, quietly trying to get my head together, trying to decide what I was going to do. Gazing out at the street, or up at the noose which hung from where once there had been a chandelier.
I don’t know who had put it there. I can guess that maybe in some moment of his life Joe had decided that he'd had enough, and hung it up there, ready to say his goodbyes.
He hadn’t hanged himself, though. I could see that. The noose was untouched, still a fresh knot where the rope was wound around itself just above the hoop itself. The rope wasn’t compacted like it would have been if it had been used. So what he had decided in the end I didn’t know, but whatever it was, it took him out of that place and along another road.
I contemplated the very same things as I sat there that evening, and I think, I hope, that I made the same decision that Joe had - to start again. I wasn’t finished fighting this world yet.
It started off as just a way of making enough money to buy food every day, clearing up other people's rubbish. I slept in the same bedroom above the Caff every night and pretty much made the place my home. What with Joe no longer around and the Caff closed, I didn’t see the harm in turning the place into my little workshop, my storage room and shop front for selling junk. It all began with odds and ends, mostly scrap collected from the alleyways that I normally would have taken to the junk yard down Choke alley. But the very first time I hauled a cartload of metal down there to trade for a few coins, I found it closed.
Tad from over the road came over occasionally, and he said that the police had caught the old owners dealing guns out of the back yard, and busted the lot of them. He hadn’t seen Joe since the night he closed the Caff up.
Over the next few years, Gallowshill started to change, yet again. Where there were empty tenement buildings with boarded-up windows, folks were rebuilding and tidying up the neighbourhood. All kinds of new businesses started to fill the old ruined storefronts along the main stretch, even right up to the Caff. As folks moved in I came along and offered my services. With the help of a few young men who were all ex soldiers like myself, I would completely strip out and clear up an old building. Furniture, junk, broken glass, everything, and of course while we did that, we picked up a hoard of other junk. Quite often they were things that folks might buy if they were cleaned up.
The Caff, which I renamed The Old Caff Trade Shop, was filled from wall to wall with it. Bicycles and bicycle parts, disused sinks, chairs, sofas, books, even window frames and doors. Anything that could be cleaned up
and put up for sale, was.
By the time I hit thirty years old, I was wealthy enough to invest my money into buying my own place.
So the Old Caff Trade Shop became The Old Caff Trade Company, and it had a massive store frontage with tenement flats above it, just around the corner from Merriwether Avenue, not far from Piccadilly. I also bought the huge plot of land just at the back of the building. It was quite a substantial plot that was run down and disused. I think the local councillor was glad to be rid of the land, since he said that vagrants used it as a hangout, and I didn't really mind them, in fact, most of them cleaned up pretty good and worked very hard in the scrap yard that I put there.
Everything that I couldn't renovate and sell in the shop went out on that land, where the ex-vagrants ran it for me like any other scrap yard. You know, one time we even had a bus sitting on that land.
Yep. A genuine London bus.
A guy named Meril found it. It was abandoned about two miles away, which was dangerously close to The Running Ground for me, but whoever put it there had left the keys in the ignition, so I just jumped on in that seat and drove it across London, right into the yard, and tucked it away in behind a huge pile of bicycle and vehicle scrap.
At one point I was going to put a building up in the middle of that yard, you know, build myself a house there and clean up the area around it. I even got the yard boys to put up some scaffolding, right where I was planning to build. Well, you know things are. That house just never got built. I think I changed my mind and decided that I didn't want to live in the middle of a scrap yard. It makes me laugh really. I don't know how long that scaffolding stood there, because it was still there when I eventually sold up. Could still be there for all I know.
Even though my business was thriving, I still missed The Caff. It had been strange leaving it behind. I remember standing outside for about an hour after boarding up the windows, just standing in the dirt and dust of the road looking up at them. The place looked so forlorn when you covered up the windows.