She allowed her feet were a wee bit chilled. ‘Maybe I’ll use that bottle for now. I’d not have you in trouble with your superiors, seeing you’re but a lassie and I’ve eyes in my head to see you mean well. But just for the now, you’ll understand. I’ve aye paid my way, and I’ll take no charity.’
I tried to explain no charity was involved. I did not succeed, but did get her to accept two eggs beaten-up in milk and sugar.
There were two photographs of young men in Army uniform on her cane bedside table. Different uniforms. ‘My man and my boy. The two wars took the two.’ Her pinched, grey face assumed a fierce dignity. ‘I’ve none to greet for me. I’ve been a burden to none. I’ll be a burden to none.’
Dr MacDonald returned. He was a solid man in his fifties, and he carried an air of patient impatience as tangible as his black bag. ‘My dear, we but wish to help you. Why not come to the hospital for a day or two?’
‘I’m obliged to the two of you, Doctor. You mean well, but I prefer to fend for myself. I’ve aye done that ‒ and that Mrs Baker had no call to go sticking her nose in ‒’ and suddenly her voice stopped. Her hooded eyes remained open, staring, and still.
A very little later I closed her eyes.
Considerably later, Miss Bruce said she would put away my car. ‘At least she did not die alone.’
I walked back home very slowly and took the long road up the hill and then round, instead of the usual short cut through the grounds of one hospital. I was about half-way before I remembered the party. I stopped walking.
Chapter Four
I had stopped in a square almost entirely taken over by various departments of the University. The majority looked closed for the night, but there were a few students ambling around, and occasionally a youngish to middle-aged man or woman came down front steps jangling car-keys. One grey-haired woman in a shapeless tweed coat had had rickets as a child. No welfare orange-juice or cod-liver oil on hand in her infancy. Nor Mrs Thompson’s.
‘Waiting for your brother, Miss Hurst?’
The voice was behind me. I glanced incuriously over my shoulder. Charles Linsey had come out of the front door nearest to me. ‘No.’
He came down the few steps. ‘Returning from work? Aren’t you very late?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t this the evening Miss Bruce mentioned something to me about some birthday-party in your flat?’ His brief smile was faintly self-derisive, I noticed, without wondering why. ‘Would you care for a lift back? Or are you waiting for someone else?’
‘I’m not waiting for anyone. And thanks, but I don’t want a lift back. Not yet.’
He looked at me more closely. ‘You’re very pale. Are you all right?’
I had lied enough for one day. I needed to explode, and he was there. He got it all, and then I said, ‘She had her pride.’
He had listened in an impassive silence. He said as unemotionally, ‘One can only be grateful the poor woman had that one consolation.’
‘Grateful? For the unnecessary misery that damned pride cost her? The welfare services mayn’t provide luxury, but if only she’d tapped them, as she was fully entitled, she could’ve had enough bedding, warmth, food, clothes, and someone to chat her up and keep an eye on her regularly.’
‘Of course. I understand that and deeply regret her not asking for help and consequently living and dying in such tragic circumstances. But, if you’ll forgive me, I think you’re seriously underestimating the importance she’ll have placed in her pride.’
Impatiently I shook my head. ‘I saw her larder. I saw what she looked like. She’s not the first Edwardian I’ve met ‒ and not only from her social background ‒ who’s been incapable of understanding what the Welfare State is actually about and throttled from asking by the same tragically stupid pride. “What’ll people think? What’ll the neighbours say?” What the hell does it matter,’ I demanded, ‘on an empty stomach?’
He said, simply, ‘Though tragic and misplaced, it mattered more to Mrs Thompson than a full stomach.’
‘You sound as if you approve?’
‘Not the consequences.’ He hesitated, as if speaking in one language and thinking in another. ‘But I have to admire her pride.’
‘Admire?’ The word nearly choked me. ‘You’re not serious? Think what it did to her!’
‘I’m also thinking it was more than probably the one factor that kept her alive so long.’
Suddenly the invisible wall between us was as thick as the Castle rock. I said, ‘We aren’t speaking the same language.’
‘Since you find that surprising, I assume you’re having the not uncommon English difficulty in recalling England stops at Berwick and Shropshire.’
‘Does it really make much difference if I am?’
For a few seconds he stared at me as if I were a foolish and peculiarly unattractive child. He slapped himself. ‘I need a cigarette and haven’t any on me. I’ve some in my car. Let’s sit down and sort this out.’
I went with him only as I hadn’t the energy for thinking up a good objection.
‘Do you smoke, Miss Hurst?’
‘Not since my first lung carcinoma ward.’
‘Sensible girl. I’ll have to stop. Not now.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Does it really make much difference? Yes, Miss Hurst, it does. This isn’t England. This is Scotland. Another country, another people, with their own history, laws, culture, national characteristics. Yet none of that has occurred to you?’
‘Yes, but ‒’
‘But you still expect Mrs Thompson of Edinburgh to react identically with Mrs Smith of London? Or possibly Mrs Jones of Swansea? All being part of the same? And if the Scots and the Welsh have their own varieties of accents, so do the indigenous inhabitants of most English counties. Consequently, that larger bit at the top and smaller bit at the side are merely extensions of England? Am I right?’
‘I guess so. And that’s wrong?’
‘If you’d worked in Paris the length you’ve worked here, and spoke good French, would you still expect to understand Madame Dubois as well as you believe you understand ‒ understood ‒ Mrs Thompson?’
I sighed. ‘No. You do?’
‘Naturally. I’m another Lowland Scot. I know social backgrounds may alter certain superficial traits, but fundamentally we’re a dour, suspicious, proud race. You’re a practical, intelligent, modern English girl. Your common sense insists a full stomach comes before pride. We’re the same generation and my intellect agrees with you, but national characteristics go much deeper than that. In consequence, I know very well that had I to make the straight choice, absurd or not, I’d keep my pride, and on my empty stomach I’d feel I’d kept the one thing that mattered.’ He was briefly silent. ‘That’s why I know it will have proved a genuine comfort to Mrs Thompson. For that only, I’m grateful. God knows that poor, brave, lonely old woman needed the one comfort.’
‘I see what you mean. I didn’t understand. I thought I did. I still wish ‒’ I broke off. ‘What’s the use now?’
He did not seem to be listening. He was sitting sideways, facing me, but looking beyond me. ‘I think she had another comfort at the end. You were with her and she’d taken a liking to you ‒’
I blushed. ‘I wouldn’t say that ‒’
‘You wouldn’t,’ he agreed quietly. ‘I do. I think she’d have been very touched to see how deeply her life and death have distressed you. Not that anything would have forced her to admit the fact. Could she’ve been here with us now’ ‒ his precise voice switched into broad Scots ‒ ‘she’d have ye ken she saw no call for a grown lassie to be too sad for greetin’ o’er a wee bit grief.’
I looked at my hands in my lap. ‘You knew her.’
He said nothing, and it was a very long time before we spoke again.
In the long, lingering northern twilight the street lamps were pale amber, the tall houses were more black than grey, and their outlines merged gently into the slowly darkening sky.
It gr
ew much darker as we sat there, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. He did most of the talking ‒ about his present job and then the three years he had spent in London as an assistant pathologist at St Benedict’s Hospital. He was interesting, as people talking about the jobs that interest them invariably are, and I was very grateful to sit listening and occasionally putting in a word. I was even more grateful for the strangely undemanding quality of his attitude towards me. I thought not only of John’s, but of so many other men’s constant demands on one’s emotions and attention. Generally, I did not much mind that, but now I was too emotionally drained to have anything left to give.
It was dark enough for him to need the dashboard light to see the clock. It was ten-thirty. ‘You don’t want to return till the party’s over, do you?’
I hesitated for obvious reasons. ‘Well ‒’
‘Yes or no?’
‘No, but I’ve held you up ages.’
‘That’s unimportant as I’m in no hurry. When did you last eat? Would you care for some food?’
‘God forbid!’ It had slipped out. ‘I’m sorry. I expect you’re starving by now.’
‘I’d eaten before I saw you. Shall we stay here or shall we have a change of scene? Have you seen the city by night?’
‘From the top of a bus.’ He was shooting up in my estimation. Not only undemanding, but he managed to be kind without giving me a guilt-complex.
‘I’ll show you another view. It’s only a wee drive.’ He switched on the engine. ‘Do up your safety-belt.’
We did not speak again until he narrowly avoided killing a youngish woman in Princes Street. She had long, brassily dyed hair and was very drunk. She did not turn her head our way when his swerve cleared her by about three inches.
He breathed out. ‘Thought I’d got her. She get over?’
‘Yes. The traffic the other side had time to brake. Wouldn’t have been your fault if you’d hit her. She just stepped off the pavement into us.’
‘But had I killed her, my hands on this wheel …’
I glanced at his hands. I had not noticed them before, but he had very good, very sensitive hands. Blood would not easily be washed off them. ‘If you had killed her the fundamental responsibility would be mine.’
‘Did you start the First and Second World Wars? Even if you did, by what right do you overrule my right to use my own free will as I see fit?’
‘You sound like my father.’ There was enough light to see the sudden rigidity in his face. ‘Dr Linsey, that was a compliment, not a crack. I like my father very much. He’s very wise and very kind, and I don’t think I only think that as I’m his daughter and love him a lot. But I can’t argue with him, either. As I haven’t a logical mind and he has, he can make verbal rings round me. I start off thinking I’m on solid rock, and by the end of the first round, as now, I’m floundering in quicksand. I hope you don’t mind my explaining?’
‘On the contrary. You don’t mind the quicksand?’
‘Too used to it.’ He had taken a sharp left turn off the main road into a dark and narrow lane running up a hill. ‘Where’s the city gone? We could be in the wilds of the country.’
‘You’ll see directly.’
The lane appeared to end in an open space on a flattened hilltop. He drew up by a bulky, unlighted building. I asked what it was.
‘An observatory. There’s another over there hiding the crest.’ He reached into the back for a leather jacket. ‘Put this over your coat and we’ll take a walk.’
It was now properly dark, and the air was surprisingly cold on my face. I recognized the forlorn elegance of the grecian pillars against the sky, some small distance from where we stood. ‘I’ve been wanting to come up here.’
‘I’d not advise you or any other woman to walk up here alone, and certainly not after dark, though, if possible, the view’s even better by night. There’s a path running round that other observatory. Come and look down.’
We walked across the rough, open ground. On the path he stopped and stood back. He said, ‘There’s the city of Edinburgh.’
Not a city, but a gigantic jewelled carpet of moving as well as stationary jewels and constantly enlarging as more and more lights came on. Unlighted St Giles was a sombre patch of black velvet. The Princes Street Gardens were dark green velvet, and above the green and the invisible Castle Rock the floodlit Castle and the Governor’s House were golden galleons sailing towards the long double rope of yellow diamonds that was Princes Street.
I had no idea how long we stood there or when we moved on slowly and sat on a bench overlooking the Leith side. In Leith Walk directly below, the old buildings were pure fairy-tale gothic and must have housed Hans Andersen’s characters. Leith was another, smaller glittering mosaic; Portobello and Joppa a beringed finger pointing into the dark, quiet water of the Forth. There was even a sickle-moon over the midnight-blue mirror of the distant sea. Beneath the moon a star hung like a dropped pearl.
He lit another cigarette. The flame caricatured the height of his brow, the length of his lashes, and the angles of his high cheekbones. ‘I thought you’d like to see this.’ I glanced at him reflectively. He sat about a foot from me, leaning back, and moving only the hand holding his cigarette. Nothing in his manner or tone suggested his awareness of the healing qualities of peace, beauty, and kindness, or that any generosity was involved in his sharing what was plainly a deeply personal pleasure with a stranger. For a very little while I wondered why he was doing this for me, but without any real interest in the answer. It was so much more restful to sit and stare and appreciate in ignorance.
Walking back along the path, I asked if he had seen Athens. ‘I haven’t. Can it possibly beat this?’
‘Athens is beautiful, but’ ‒ he paused apologetically ‒ ‘I’m an Edinburgh man.’
I smiled. ‘Civis Romanus sum.’
He stiffened, and then, realizing I was not sending him up, smiled back. ‘Precisely.’
Driving home, we discussed our families. He had a mother, stepfather, and two younger half-sisters. I had the impression he was very fond of his family, though his strongest expression of approval was, ‘I like seeing them.’
‘That’s a break.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you?’
‘It’s a break to hear of another family not constantly at each other’s throats. After hearing so many of our friends’ horror stories of parental antipathy and deprived childhoods Bassy and I often feel downright deprived ourselves over our lack of those currently groovy chips.’
He smiled quietly. ‘I think that bothers my youngest sister more than a little. The poor child’s sixteen, enjoys her boarding-school, loves the Highlands. Now my stepfather’s retired, being a Highlander he’s moved back to the hills.’
‘Aching to rebel without cause for rebellion? The poor kid! Pathetic!’
‘Isn’t it? However, as she’s aiming for some, and preferably English, university, is fairly intelligent, and very strong-minded, I’ve no doubt she’ll be happy on the barricades in a few years’ time.’
‘Why’s she aiming for England?’
‘She says that’s where it’s all happening.’
I smiled. ‘Will her parents mind?’ He shook his head. ‘Will you?’
‘No. Not that it would signify if I did. My younger ‒ in fact both my sisters have minds of their own.’
‘Is your other sister at university?’
‘No.’ We were back in Princes Street. ‘Let me know if you see any more suicidal drunks.’
‘Sure.’ I intended asking more about his second sister, but sneezed instead. Forgetting I still had on his leather coat, I reached for a handkerchief and had used it before discovering it was not mine. Nor was it his, unless he used Miss Dior.
It then seemed incredible, but it was a fact that till then I had forgotten he had a fiancée. I wondered where she was right now, if he would tell her about this, and if so, if she’d have the sense to believe him. Some would. Most wo
uldn’t. I could hear John’s shout of laughter. ‘Up on that lonely hill in the dark and not a finger on you?’
Once my father said, ‘As most people are only capable of judging by their own standards, it’s useful to remember their judgments will tell you far more about themselves than the judged.’
I wished I had remembered that when I first met John and been amused by what I had assumed to be only a moddy, cynical pose. It was no pose. John did not trust anyone, including himself. I wondered how his wife was handling that, and then discovered I was thinking of her without wincing. I thought of John and breathed very deeply. It was like coming unexpectedly to the end of a long, dark tunnel. Just a man I had once known and loved enough to leave me with an emotional scar. And dead scared of being hurt again.
It was twenty to twelve when we got in. The hall and stairs were as quiet as the street outside.
He looked up the stairs. ‘Would you like to come up in my lift and walk down one flight rather than up four?’
Mrs Kinloch had told us there was a private lift to the top flat beyond the door at the back of the hall, but I had yet to see it in use. Had John, or most Englishmen of my acquaintance in Charles Linsey’s age-group, made this suggestion at this hour in London it would have been for the most obvious reason. I was instinctively convinced that was not his, nor was it mine for accepting. If the party had not ended it would at any moment. His fiancée might not get the wrong impression if she heard we had walked into the parting guests. Sandra certainly would.
He unlocked the door. ‘I have to keep this locked to satisfy my insurance company. As you’ll see, this lift opens into my front hall. The elderly relative from whom I inherited this building had it put in as he liked living above and found the stairs too much.’ The lift stopped. He opened the gates for me and immediately unlocked his flat front door. ‘I’ll see you down.’
Edinburgh Excursion Page 5