When they came out at Scotland Street Station they made their way down to Granton. You could get a ferry there to take you over to Fife. There was no Forth Bridge in those days, you see.”
Cyril barked suddenly, and Domenica swung the beam of the torch round to illuminate him.
“He’s seen something,” said Angus Lordie. “Look at the way his nose is quivering. What have you picked up, boy – what have you sniffed?”
Cyril growled. “He’s never wrong, you know,” said Angus Lordie. “He’s found something. Shine the beam in the direction he’s looking in, Domenica.”
Domenica moved the beam of the torch to the side. They were all silent as the light moved and then there came a gasp from Domenica. She was the first to see it – the first to understand what they were looking at. And then the others realised too, and they looked at Domenica, on whose face a small part of the light of the torch was falling. And they waited for guidance – for an explanation.
Domenica broke the silence that followed Cyril’s extraordinary discovery. And it was Cyril’s discovery, as everybody later agreed
– one for which he should be given all due credit. Had he not barked to alert them to the change in the smell of the air, then they would have walked right past the largely-concealed mouth of the side-tunnel. But Cyril, detecting a new whiff, gave them warning, and when Domenica turned her torch in the right direction, they had seen the much smaller tunnel sloping off to the west.
“Peter Backhouse said nothing about this,” muttered Domenica, as she took a step towards the mouth of the smaller tunnel.
“It has no doubt been forgotten about,” said Angus Lordie, reaching out to twist off a piece of the board that had been used to block the entrance. The wood came away in his hand, and immediately another piece fell off the now-crumbling barrier.
“I suspect that this is a service tunnel of some sort,” said Domenica, directing the beam up the very much narrower passage.
“Shall we?” said Angus Lordie. “Would it be safe to walk up a little? Heaven knows what we might find.”
The idea of fresh exploration seemed attractive to Domenica and Angus Lordie – and immensely so to Cyril, who was straining on his lead to enter this territory of uncharted smells.
Pat was not so enthusiastic. It was one thing to walk down a well-known tunnel, and quite another to explore a tunnel which nobody appeared to know about. Again she worried about the possible failure of the torch. It would have been bad enough having to navigate down the central tunnel in complete darkness, but if they entered what might well be a warren of service tunnels, then they might be lost indefinitely, wandering around beneath the streets of Edinburgh until hunger and fatigue claimed them and they failed. There would be no prospect of rescue, then, as nobody knew that they had ventured into the Scotland Street tunnel in the first place. Their disappearance would thus be a
complete mystery, rather like the disappearance of that party of Australian schoolgirls who were swallowed up by the earth at Hanging Rock. That had not been a successful picnic, on the whole.
“Do you think this is safe?” she asked. Her voice in the darkness sounded very weak, and she wondered whether anybody had heard her. But Domenica had, and she reached out and grasped her arm.
“Don’t worry. This won’t go very far. And if it were going to cave in, it would have done so a long time ago.”
“Quite right,” added Angus Lordie. “Safe as houses.”
They made their way down the side-tunnel, walking more slowly, as there was less room, and they could barely fit two abreast. The tunnel was not quite straight, and from time to time it veered slightly to the left or right, but its general direction was westwards.
Pat shivered. The air was cooler now, and she began to regret not having fetched a jersey or a coat from the flat before they began their expedition. But she had been unwilling to go into her flat in case she should disturb Bruce and Sally, and so she had come lightly dressed. Of course there was no reason to believe that Bruce and Sally would be there: they were probably still in the Cumberland Bar, for all she knew, or having dinner together, over a candle-lit table. Would they be talking about her? she wondered. Of course they would not – there was no reason for them to be interested in her. Bruce tolerated her –
that was all – and Sally disliked her. So she was nothing to them, and they would have no reason even to think about her, let alone discuss her.
She was aware of Angus Lordie walking beside her, while Domenica was a few steps ahead, the light from her torch bobbing up and down as she walked.
“What an adventure!” Angus Lordie whispered. “Did you imagine that we would find ourselves taking a subterranean promenade together?”
“No,” she said. “I did not.”
He sighed. “I am conscious, of course, that there are many 268
“Don’t throw your heart away, my dear. I recognise the signs so well. An impossible passion. Don’t waste your time on him.”
She was going to remain silent, but her answer slipped out, almost without her willing it.
“It’s not so easy,” she said. “I’d like to stop, but I find that I can’t. You can’t stop yourself feeling something for somebody else. You just can’t.”
“Oh yes, you can,” said Angus Lordie, his voice raised slightly.
“You can stop yourself from loving somebody perfectly well. You simply change the way you look at them. People do it all the time.”
Domenica now joined in. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you can’t really expect to have a confidential conversation
