Fall From Grace (26 page)

‘Mumbles. Nothing but mumbles.’

Emily made a little moue of disappointment, breathed in somewhat deeper and moved closer.

He could discern her fragrance clearer now, it would be cologne, women often used such or it might just be natural.

Mulholland hadn’t been in such close proximity to Emily before, except in his dreams and then they were married so she could lie on the sheets with dilated eyes and no one would think the worse of him, but he suddenly realised with a jolt of panic that they were in her bedroom and if Robert Forbes found him here then he could kiss goodbye to the fair Emily plus possibly his job as well.

Certainly his prospects of promotion.

Constables on a case were not to be discovered in the sleeping quarters of the daughter of the house.

‘I better be on my way,’ he muttered. ‘I have crimes to unravel, Emily.’

She giggled and looked around the room that, as far as he could make out, was draped with all sorts of femininity.

‘But it’s cosy in here,’ she murmured.

‘I’m not all that sure about cosy.’

She leant forward so that her head almost rested on his manly bosom, her hair flowing unpinned and loose.

And there’s another warning signal.

‘So,’ she queried softly, ‘what were you talking to father about?’

Arson and cigars were not obviously a response that would fit the bill.

‘I can’t tell you.’

Was it his imagination or had something rustled up against his kneecap?

‘I think I know.’

Her mouth parted slightly and the faintest odour of oil of cloves reached his flared nostrils.

‘Do you?’ he sniffed.

‘And I think I know his answer.’

‘You do?’

If she got any closer she’d feel the engagement box bumping up against her or something of that sort.

‘He said,’ breathed Emily, ‘you must wait.’

‘He did say that. His very words.’

Mulholland suddenly felt more in command of the situation but that could be undone at any moment.

‘And will you?’

‘Till the morning.’

She laughed, took a step back and he let out a long shuddering breath of relief. Dilation is all very well in dreams and that applied to swelling also, but in reality they were dangerous as hell.

‘You’re very droll, sir.’

‘That’s me,’ he muttered.

She moved in close again.

‘You mustn’t lose heart. My father thinks I am a creature of whims, but I am more than that.’

‘I’m sure you’re not less,’ replied the constable, hoping that this made sense.

‘Everything comes to he who waits.’

‘Does it now?’

‘Everything.’

There was a soft pressure against his arm and he didn’t dare look down to see what was causing such, all he knew is that if he had his restrainers to hand he would have slapped them on her.

‘Is this a whim?’ he questioned.

‘What does it feel like?’

Something was caught in his gullet but he couldn’t cough it up, not at this juncture.

There was a thud from upstairs as the study door opened and closed. They both tensed, but the steps crossed over the landing above and then another door opened and shut.

However that was sufficient for Emily; like many a young girl she gloried in her power to bewitch the opposite sex but a father’s footfall broke the spell.

‘You had better leave,’ she remarked primly.

‘The wisest course,’ came the croaky response.

He opened the bedroom door and peered cautiously out before setting off down the corridor; the last thing Mulholland desired to meet was the dumpy maid with the rolling eyes.

As he prepared to slip out of the front door, she called softly after; a little annoyed that he had not paused for a last lingering glance back at her glowing form.

‘Martin?’

‘What is it?’ he hissed; this girl would have him boiled in oil if she didn’t keep her silence.

‘If the worst happens,’ Emily whispered, striking a telling pose, ‘we can always sing duets together.’

‘I’ll have to clear my throat first,’ was the terse retort and with that he disappeared into the night.

27

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death you’ll find him

THOMAS MOORE,
The Minstrel Boy

Dundee, 28 December 1879

The tall gaunt figure was wreathed in the spirals of tobacco smoke, like a mountaintop showing above the mist. He prepared to open his mouth and let rip, Sabbath or not a man had to work. God would understand as he did all things.

This public house down by the waterfront was of the lowest sort, in fact more of a drinking den to which the authorities turned a blind eye since it gathered most of the riff-raff from the city under the one roof and left more respectable places free from their unwanted presence.

Of course the fact that the mill and foundry workers had been forced, after a strike of protest, to accept a cut of 5 per cent in wages and a simultaneous increase of working hours, then, when the strike was broken, many of them being laid off for their pains, might possibly have had some hand in swelling the ranks of destitution and poverty but it had at least brought the working practices into line with England.

That must have been of great comfort to the Scots.

And so aided by the cheapest beer and rough spirit men drowned their sorrows, and watched with glazed eyes while the self-styled Premier Poet of Dundee, William McGonagall, thrust a bony right leg forward and launched into verse.

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.