The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

suitable for those under two.” “But everything’s magic for them,” Isabel had said. “Have you noticed how he laughs if you hide your fingers under the tablecloth? He thinks that’s terribly clever.”

For the inhabitants of Ramsay Garden, the Festival brought only the promise of sleepless nights. Their proximity to the Castle Esplanade, on which the military tattoo was performed each evening during the Festival, meant that they had to endure massed pipe bands every night, along with all the pyrotechnics, the fireworks and explosions, that the military, and large sections of an enthusiastic public, consider to be artistic. The final movement of the 1812 Overture, with its cannon fire, was a gift for such an occasion, and was being performed that year, adding to the assault on the senses of those who lived nearby. At least, thought Isabel, as she glanced up at the immense structure which had been erected on the esplanade, at least the modern inhabitants know that the bangs and explosions were not real; earlier inhabitants of that spot would have quaked at such sounds, which would have meant real cannon fire. And the skirl of pipes would have heralded the arrival of troops, and trouble.

She reached the Moncrieffs’ door. A small brass plate said, simply, MONCRIEFF; along the edge of the plate was etched a tiny art nouveau device, one of those curious vines that artists of the period liked so much. The inhabitants of Ramsay Garden were playing the game, keeping in period, just as the inhabitants of the Georgian New Town on the other side of Princes Street were doing their best to maintain a Georgian style. The city encourages actors, thought Isabel, as probably all iconic cities do; look at the Parisians; it must be such an effort being so Parisian. She smiled at the thought, and pressed the bell. She herself lived in a Victorian house, but was not sure how she should respond to that particular challenge. By being stern and disapproving? By clothing the legs of pianos to preserve modesty? If the Victorians had ever really done that, she thought; and she had her doubts. Mind you, had there not been a Victorian librarian who had insisted on keeping books by men and women on separate shelves, unless, of course, the authors were married—in which case the books might properly be placed side by side?

Stella greeted her and gestured for her to come inside. She looked relieved, Isabel decided; as if she had worried that I would not come.

“I’m not late, I hope,” Isabel said. She knew that she was not, but it was something to say.

“Of course not. You’re…well, you’ve come exactly when I expected you.”

Isabel looked about her. They were standing in a generously sized entrance hall. Off to the right, which was the back of the building, there was a door that led into a kitchen, and a short corridor off to further rooms, the bedrooms, she imagined. Then, to the front, another door, attractively panelled in light oak, opened out into a room which, although Isabel could not see into it, she assumed would be the drawing room. That was the room which looked north, which would have the famous Ramsay Garden view, and there was light flooding in from it.

She glanced at the furniture, at the walls. It was typical of an Edinburgh flat of a well-heeled professional couple, which she assumed was what the Moncrieffs were—or had been: this was a house that had seen social disaster, she reminded herself.

“Marcus is through there,” said Stella, gesturing to the drawing room. Her voice was lowered; the hushed tone one might use outside a hospital room.

She led Isabel into the room. At first, after the comparative gloom of the entrance hall, the light seemed overwhelming. It suffused the room, flooded it, and made Isabel blink.

“Facing north,” she said, “and yet this is so bright.”

Stella muttered something about the windows, but Isabel did not catch what she said. Her attention was now focused on a man sitting in a chair by the large expanse of window at the front. He turned his head as they entered and rose to his feet.

“Marcus,” said Stella, her voice raised slightly, as if she were talking to a child. “Isabel Dalhousie has arrived.”

As Marcus rose to greet her, he was dark against the glow behind him, a chiaroscuro effect that created what felt, Isabel thought, like an annunciation scene. She moved towards him, towards the light, and they shook hands.

“The view…,” said Isabel.

They both turned to look out. “Yes, that’s a view, isn’t it?” said Marcus. “I sit here and see something different virtually every moment.” He gestured towards Fife, where the hills, dark green and solid, were sharply outlined against the sky, like sections of a collage. “The sky over there changes constantly. Constantly. It shifts from blue to white to purple—just like that. It’s very bright right now, for some reason.”

But Isabel was gazing downwards, to where the flanks of the Castle Rock descended almost vertically to the douce order of Princes Street Gardens, the railway line, the floral clock, the benches. Her gaze drifted beyond that, over the tops of the buildings, the crude, grey architectural mistake of the New Club, the ridges of chimneys, the stately stone pediments, to Trinity in the distance, and then the silver band of the Forth. The heart of a country, she thought; the heart of this place.

There was a chair opposite his, and Marcus invited her to sit down. As she did so, she cast a quick appraising eye over him. He was a man somewhere in his fifties—the younger end, she thought—tall, just beginning to grey, and with one of those slightly angular faces that spoke of intelligent determination. It was a face which would have looked good on a banker, or a senior lawyer, but would do well for a doctor; a trustworthy face. And not at all aggressive, she thought. This was the face of a kind man.

His voice was soft, the words clearly articulated, each syllable given its value, and each r given more. It was what she would have described as an old-fashioned Scottish professional voice. Of course he was innocent; that cardiologist was right—she could not imagine his doing anything underhanded.

“You know, I’m not sure whether Stella should have bothered you with my troubles,” he said. “This wasn’t my idea, you know. This meeting of ours. Not my idea.”

“I’m here only because I want to be,” said Isabel. “I assure you.”

He smiled, a quick, wistful smile. “That’s good to know. I’m not sure whether I’m here because I want to be. I rather think I’m not.”

Here in what sense? Isabel wondered. At this meeting with her, or here in this room, rather than elsewhere—at work, in a hospital or clinic? And there was a final possibility: here on this earth.

“When your wife…when Stella spoke to me, I doubted if there was anything I could do to help you. I told her that. But if there is anything…well, it’s sometimes useful to have somebody else go over things and see if there is