Ironically the subject matter was ‘The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay’, which though a source of great pride had also attendant grief, since many of its creators had been rewarded on its completion by the news from Alan Telfer that their services were no longer required.
So it was with mixed feelings but strange courtesy that they fell silent and prepared to hear their exploits praised by this outlandish chronicler, hair lank and greasy to the shoulders under a wide-brimmed hat, a long frock coat which flapped around his ankles, a lean structure of face which more than hinted of the skull beneath, a thin slash of a mouth justifiably turned down at the corners, and eyes deep in their sockets, black and piercing fuelled by his obsession with a treacherous Muse.
The din in the place stilled as he raised one hand to signal declamation. His voice rang like a clarion call to arms for it had been honed at first in the penny gaffs of Dundee then village and city halls, by surmounting catcalls, penny whistles, crawmills, and howls of derision from young hooligans and university students alike.
But these here in this tavern were his own folk for he had once been a loom weaver before the Muse struck at his vitals; these in front of him shared in the tradition of the singer and the song.
And so, there was silence as he raised the stout stick he always carried for protection against the Philistines, to signal commencement.
These, the words of his own making. Self-crafted.
‘Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array,
And your central girders which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.
The greatest wonder of the day,
And a great beautification to the River Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.’
It was truly the worst poetry one particular listener had ever heard but the misguided intensity of the delivery, grandiose belief in the destiny of fame, and the implausible admiration of McGonagall towards the poetic worth of his own genius, might almost persuade the ear to attend part of a following versification.
‘Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave
His home far away, incognito in his dress,
And view thee ere he passed along en route for Inverness.’
For James McLevy the second stanza confirmed that the one before was indeed no accident and he withdrew himself into a state of contemplation that he had stumbled upon as a child, when first viewing his own mother’s dead body.
Nothing like a lacerated throat to teach the value of strategic withdrawal.
It was as if he saw the vista before him through a long glass and his gaze passed from face to face, scene to scene like a sharp lens. At the same time a buzzing noise hung in the air that modified all other sounds to a soft background so that the total focus of concentration was in the vision.
He witnessed faces scarred by labour and the lack of it, alcohol firing into the features of the men a spurious sparkle, some animation that to the profit of the publican would need frequent replenishing, then also amongst the crowd a few brightly dressed women with gaudy shawls and hot desperate eyes. Old women huddled in corners, jealously guarding the dregs in their glass, shrinkie-faced, thrawn and gash-mouthed; an appearance that told of life survived but not relished.
All this he observed yet he did not see the face he was searching for, and so his gaze swept round again to the round ‘O’ of the poet’s mouth as he brought his masterpiece near a proclaimed conclusion.
‘Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.’
McGonagall screwed up his face mournfully to indicate a heartfelt concern at that grim possibility before launching into a last verse that praised amongst others a certain Thomas Bouch and then ended with the last lines, inevitable in rhyme, hidebound in rhythm, bawled out to the rafters in artistic crescendo.
‘Which stands unequalled to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green!’
There was a genial if drunken roar of approval and the poet removed his hat to take a very small collection inside the hollow crown before throwing the stick over his shoulder and launching into a boisterous ditty called ‘The Rattling Boy from Dublin’. This song brought even more approbation from the many Irish present who seemed to know the words as well as its author did, and McLevy resumed more inward contemplation.
The inspector had come across the Tay Bridge by an early-morning train and not remotely enjoyed the experience; as well as a morbid dislike of being immersed in water, he was not drawn either to heights, earth being his preferred element. And, though it was a flat calm day, the river below like a glass reflecting the image as if the bridge reached down into the very depths, the inspector could have sworn that as the train picked up to a considerable speed there was an uneasy shifting movement under his backside.
It might well also have been an optical illusion, caused by momentary vertigo when he was unwise enough to poke his head out of the window and experience the feeling of being pulled down towards the profound deep beneath, but to his shaky eyes there appeared a vertical oscillation in the High Girders as the train flew past.
However none of the other passengers, who included a fair quota of women and children, seemed in the least perturbed, and so the inspector quit the carriage at the other side, scolded himself for a faint- heart and then spent all day in the city of Dundee, out of his parish and on his lonesome.
Anything beyond Leith was, in his opinion, foreign soil; the rest of Edinburgh he could just about thole but Dundee, in terms of psyche and personality, might well have been darkest Africa.
The natives spoke the same language, that much was true, but they seemed kind-natured and lacked the flinty unstated disapproval with which the Edinburgh citizens regarded their fellow man.
Also they did not give with one hand and take back with the other.
Furthermore the Dundonians lacked malice, the sine qua non of the sentient Celt and, rather than holding a grudge against their obviously superior rival across the water, seemed to derive a deal of humour from the opposite camp.
They placed McLevy as belonging there by his accent and commiserated his unfortunate fate to be landed amongst such a tight-arsed community.
That was that, then.
However, though pleasant enough, the natives were also wary, volunteered no more than the recipient deserved and could smell the police a mile off … Which meant that all his inquiries about Hercules Dunbar came to absolutely nothing.
The same result as had manifested in Edinburgh after the jail breakout. The man had vanished and it was McLevy’s hunch that he may have headed back to his old haunts here to secrete himself amongst the
