Such are the ways of the solitary man.
A scratching at the window intruded upon these reflections and an indignant yowl claimed his attention.
A visitor.
He walked over, reached across the table to raise the sash window and the black shape of Bathsheba ghosted in to make at once for two chipped saucers near to the fire containing, respectively, a recently poured ladle of milk and some leftover scraps of cheese and pickle.
The cat dived into the cheese, sniffed in suspicion at the pickle before dismissing it altogether, then moved over to lap with some rapidity at the milk.
It always struck McLevy that the intake of liquid on such an occasion was out of proportion to the lingual exertion involved, but he was not of the feline species.
He waited patiently until Bathsheba emptied the saucer and then watched her jump up to the hearth where McLevy had arranged an old torn red semmit, far enough from the meagre flames not to catch a spark but sufficiently near to absorb some warmth.
One of the armchairs, the one without the broken spring, was set before the ingle and McLevy sat down to regard the animal thoughtfully.
She would rest for about half an hour and then be on her way, over the rooftops to a world he could only wonder over, where yellow eyes gleamed in the night and various small birds and rodents found their own world abruptly terminated.
A time before Bathsheba had obviously been pregnant, some dirty old tom had pinned her to the slates. It had been her first litter but he had never seen trace of offspring and did not like to dwell upon their fate.
Now, she was returned her svelte queenly self.
‘What kind of mother are you?’ he suddenly demanded. ‘Did ye drop the poor wee buggers off the roof?’
The cat yawned and buried her head into the fur near to her tail.
McLevy rested back his own cranium, noted a damp patch on the ceiling and frowned.
In the morning he would call on a banker who owed him a favour and who also knew more about the financial dealings in Edinburgh than any man alive. The information McLevy sought as regards Oliver Garvie would be confidential but the pastime the banker wished to keep hidden from the world was also a clandestine matter.
He closed his eyes and drifted.
Secrets everywhere.
19
I was a little stranger, which at my entrance into
the world was saluted and surrounded by
innumerable joys. My knowledge was divine.
THOMAS TRAHERNE,
As Mulholland almost galloped through the damp streets, his mind raced with the probabilities of glory. A golden future.
Emily in adoration trembling as the ring was fixed upon her finger and the organ swelled. Mrs Roach tears in her eyes, the lieutenant waggling the stripes of promotion discreetly by his side, Robert Forbes beaming proudly at his newly adjusted son-in-law, and McLevy, nose out of joint at a case cracked in his absence, skulking at the back of the church, knowing that time was not on his side and the younger man was coming through.
On the rails. The old horse tiring, the thoroughbred sweeping past with nary a backward glance, or maybe a small compassionate flick of the eyes, then kick the turf, great clods of earth spraying all over the lumbering beast behind, as it headed towards the knackers yard!
From these thoughts, it is not difficult to observe that the constable was getting a mite beyond himself.
This exhilaration prompted Mulholland to laugh aloud as he forded the puddles of East Claremont Street, causing a respectable couple coming towards him to quicken their pace past, and a young nymph of the pave, the girl could not have been more than Emily’s age, to sniff a potential joker on the ran-dan and hiss quietly from one of the wynds,
‘In here my mannie, warm and cosy, like a robin’s nest.’
She must be new on the bones not to recognise him even in his civilian clothes but Mulholland had no time to lay out the dangers of the life she led, no time to fix her with a piercing glance so that she felt the weight of authority, not his lustful body, pressing upon her.
The constable waved a hand; palm outstretched like a holy saint warding off temptation, and strode on through the faint glimmering light of the street lamps.
The girl watched his figure disappearing into the gloom and sighed. A cold damp night, her feet soaking wet, and not a randie-boy in sight. Still, not long till the taverns emptied and she might yet make a catch.
She took out a small mirror and gazed at her face in reflection. No sign of the pox. But you could rarely tell from countenance who did or did not possess such.
Men cursed and called it
She’d had unprotected congress with a baker’s apprentice the night before, no sheath to hand, and hoped the young man was clean-living.
But if he was so, what was he doing with her?
She giggled like a child at that. He had promised her a puggy bun, her favourite, a treacle sponge mixture inside a pastry case, on their next mounting and maybe he’d be her regular and after that, who knows?
So wished-for affection overcomes bitter experience to kindle hope in the human heart.
But she was also a practical girl and looked after the departed Mulholland with a sense of regret.
Thought she had a chance there, it’s not often you see a man with such a smile on his face.
Not often.
The constable meanwhile was still bound for glory and the New Town, in the shape of Doune Terrace just below Moray Place where Oliver Garvie had his residence.
An elegant facade where rich folk could look down on the lowly worms crawling through the streets. Well we’d see about the worms, eh?
He had worked his way through the back roads and now was coming around Royal Terrace, close to his destiny, and as he walked along he suddenly skipped up into the air like a demented giraffe as his mind replayed that last exchange with Mary Rough.
