Fall From Grace (2 page)

It was a large warehouse, piled high with packing cases. All wooden. All grist to the mill. The ceiling was high and vaulted, a good updraught and plenty of gaps in the walls for the wind to whistle in and fan the flames.

Mary noted all this with a keen eye as she crossed towards him, carrying the lamp in one hand and a large sack, which she bore lightly enough, in the other.

The light from the lamp caught Daniel’s shadow and threw it in grotesque against the assembled pile, as he capered round it, dragging his twisted right foot behind like a horse would haul a ploughshare through stony earth.

His infirmity. It had twisted his nature as well.

Daniel snatched at the sack and emptied it out, shaking a thick mass of wood shavings on to the floor, and then scraped them round the heaped cases with his warped, misshapen foot, giggling like an uncontrollable child.

‘What’s sae funny?’ asked Mary, who was growing increasingly nervous, the sooner they were out of this place the better; she had a bad feeling which was getting worse by the second. Not helped by the fact that she had failed to move her bowels all day and was dying to sit on a midnight cackie-pot.

Daniel bent over and blew playfully at some shavings to propel them like a snowdrift towards the bottom of his created edifice. Then he straightened up and recited a fragment of what was swirling through his mind.

‘I says tae the joiner fellow, “Can I have these shavings kind sir?” Says he, “Whit for?” Says I, “They start a fine fire.”’

He laughed at that then a following thought, not so pleasant struck him. ‘The auld bugger even wanted payment, is there nae charity in this thieving bastard world?’

His face suddenly contorted in anger and he produced a heavy hammer from the inside depths of his jacket to bring it crashing down repeatedly on the lid of one of the cases.

‘So, I gave him this blow, then I gave him another!’

‘Ye’re a liar,’ said Mary. ‘Ye gave him the payment.’

Daniel ignored this shaft of mother-wit and dashed his hammer down on the dislodged lid, breaking it into pieces which he added to the accumulation.

‘Ye don’t need all that,’ she remonstrated, ‘the place is dry as a bone. Go up like the flames o’ hell.’

Again he paid no attention and, his manic burst of energy far from exhausted, shoved the hammer back into his pocket then delved into the contents of the broken case, emerging with a small square box which he opened up and sniffed, in apparent ecstasy.

‘Stinko D’Oros, ripe and ready.’

‘Don’t touch the merchandise!’ came the sharp warning but Daniel, in response, bawled out like a market trader.

‘Best quality, dozen in the box!’

‘Quieten down, for the love of Christ!’

He bowed his head in seeming contrition, meekly closed the lid, handed the box over to Mary’s keeping, and then signalled for the lamp.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Mary.

‘Give it me.’

‘You’re no’ in control.’

‘Give it me!!’

There was a drunken evil glare in his eye that frightened her. Mother or not, she sometimes wondered if, one sweet day, her darling son would split the maternal skull with his big fine hammer.

She handed over the lamp and he snuffed out the wick, leaving them both in complete darkness. Then he swung the vessel round to release the oil, which spattered over the heap of shavings and wood; laughing wildly as some of the fluid landed and slid like mucus all down his front.

‘A wee lick here, a wee lick there, ach the whole damn thing!’

There was a crash of breaking metal and glass as he hurled the lamp to shatter on the sharp edge of the crates.

‘Watch your body now!’ Mary called out in the pitch-black surrounding her, an edge of panic in her tone. She had a superstitious terror of the dark, and always slept with a candle by the bed lest night-demons came to steal her soul for his Satanic Majesty.

Daniel fumbled in his pocket for a lucifer, which was struck up to illuminate his sweaty distorted face, eyes bulging in the sudden light.

‘This place will fire like a tinder-box,’ she warned, moving back to safe distance while she could still see.

‘And I’m just the boy tae do it,’ said Daniel with pride. But as he moved towards the pile, his boot crunched on a shard of glass and he staggered slightly.

‘For Christ’s good sake guard yerself!’ Mary hissed, shoving the box that he had given her inside the deep pocket of her old coat, a souvenir from the time when she had once been a shoplifter of high repute.

‘Ach, it’s my bad foot Mammy,’ came the derisive, muffled response.

Daniel bent over, cupping the lucifer in hand, now it was time, now would see his fear go up in smoke. He crooned some more of the song, giving the words a sinister lilt.

‘Tirling at the window, crying at the lock,

Are the weans in their bed, for now it’s ten o’clock?’

For a moment time stood still, then tragedy which had been biding its occasion in the shadows, made a dire and purposeful entrance.

As Daniel dropped the lucifer on the shavings, they flared into life, leaping up like a tiger from ambush and found a sympathetic response from the oil spilled on his trousers and coat. He howled in pain, lost his footing and fell forward on to a blaze of his own creation as the rest of the dry tinder exultantly joined the conflagration.

In a matter of seconds, a wall of flame had formed a barrier between the horrified Mary and her combustible son.

She could hear his screams and reached out her arms helplessly to call his name as he burned like a pillar of fire.

But he led no tribe towards the Promised Land. The fear that had always haunted him had been well founded. The fire had claimed him, embraced him like a loving father and was teaching its child the secrets of white heat.

His shrieks of agony rang in Mary’s ears as the flames leapt towards her, seeking another convert to the cause.

3

Like pilgrims to th’appointed place we tend;

The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.

JOHN DRYDEN,
Palamon and Arcite

Dean Village, 8 November 1880

Margaret Bouch watched on, as her husband’s coffin was lowered into the ground. The ropes held and it went smoothly enough into the appointed slot. She blinked a little as the icy, slanting November rain which had swept across Dean Cemetery from the moment the pitifully small cortège had entered the gates, stung her face through the black veil in retribution for tears unshed.

She recollected that as a child, funerals had always provoked in her a perverse desire to cock a snoot, to whirl a mad cartwheel, heels in the air, petticoats a’flying, to scandalise the moon faces of the mourners with flesh and bone.

What if she did so now, she pondered to herself?

What if she ripped the dripping bonnet from her recently widowed head, flipped it neatly to join the lumps of earth already falling on the coffin lid as the ropes were hauled out of the grave, and called aloud, ‘I’ll dance the hornpipe with the sailor boys tonight, how does that recommend itself unto you, Sir Thomas, my darling one?’

Perhaps not, was her decision. Save it for another day.

Margaret looked across to where their three children, all grown now, huddled together under a weeping umbrella.

Her son’s pale face was set in stone and manly forbearance.

Everyone thought him an absolute brick, and who was she to disagree? He had accompanied them every day to the Court of Inquiry and they had both watched as his father’s proud façade cracked like the very bridge itself.

Every day she had observed Sir Thomas ignore her and lean more and more heavily upon the filial arm as the clouds of shame and disgrace gathered above his head.

And then they had burst.

As she brought this to mind, another squall of rain hit her through the veil, the sudden violence driving some of the mourners back from the edge of the grave.

But Margaret Bouch stood firm. She was the widow after all. Widows don’t give an inch.

The minister droned on, something about the Kingdom of Heaven and how to get there, surely better to quote from the Psalm? ‘Praise the Lord upon earth: ye dragons, and all deeps; Fire and Hail, snow and vapours; Wind and storm, fulfilling his word.’

Praise the Lord indeed, was her unhallowed thought. He had shown no mercy that dreadful night towards the last year’s end, nor, in Margaret’s experience, had he ever demonstrated much inclination towards clemency upon earth.

The Reverend Jeremiah Sneddon of the Episcopalian Church of Scotland, a man in her opinion who more than lived up to his name, had insisted upon being bare-headed and his wispy white hair, plastered to his skull, left him to look like a monkey caught out in the rain.

Margaret had a quick glance round to make sure no one was aware of these profane contemplations but she was safe behind the veil. What a dreadful woman she was to be sure. Last night had she not drunk of strong whisky? And more than one glass. In the morning she had noticed her fingers tremble as she donned the widow’s weeds.

She fumbled for her handkerchief, slyly raised her hand under the damp veil as if touching the cloth to her face, breathed out and sniffed. No. Not a trace. A faint redolence only of violets, from the lozenges sucked so assiduously after her toilette that very morning.

Toilette, Margaret reflected, now there’s a respectable word, for was she not a respectable lady?

She felt as if her husband had been an iron band around her body and now, free of its constraint, she was shaking to pieces as the train roared overhead.

Margaret shivered. One of the newspapers had as its front page an artist’s impression of the calamity, men, women and children falling into the bleak December sea like so many brittle leaves. Although almost a year ago, she could not rid her mind of that image.

And what of Sir Thomas, she wondered? What pictures were frozen inside the cold obstruction of his mind?

She had experienced an impersonal kind of compassion for the man despite the secrets he had concealed. A dutiful pity. But he had shut her from his life and locked her out like a poor beast in the rain. Year by year, the little wife had withered and dwindled while he and his true love kissed and fondled to heart’s content.

Now, Mistress Bouch was free. Free to destroy herself in any way she saw fit.

The minister closed his bible with a dull, righteous thud and Margaret became conscious that she was the focus of many eyes.

For a moment she was confused then remembered the protocol of interment. The widow knelt down, groped for a portion of the damp, sodden earth and cast it into the grave before her. The muddy mass landed on the polished oaken lid, stuck to one of the brass fittings, then slid slowly out of sight towards oblivion.

She hoped sincerely that would do the trick.

And it did. She watched the others follow suit, the rain herding in their thrown clods like a drover, and then the pallbearers began to drift away. Just like her mind.

Margaret had felt such a welcome separation from reality since her lord and master had died and prayed most earnestly for its continuance.

In the meantime, all ceremonies were to be observed and she would play her part. They would all reconvene at the house in Bernard Street; a little too near the Leith docks for some, but Sir Thomas had it purchased as his base in Edinburgh because he liked to walk to the sea and gaze upon that which he planned to conquer.

Reconvene. She could just see it now. Tasteful funeral meats would be passed from hand to hand, malt whisky raised to lips, not the grieving widow’s of course, and then after a respectful time the mourners would take their pious departure, surreptitiously scraping heels on the kerbing stone outside lest some oozing stigma had attached itself to their shoes along with the earth from the cemetery.

Margaret became aware that a man was standing before her muttering words of comfort she could scarcely hear such was the blessed separation.

A fellow engineer to her husband, bound by professional code to attend; a few of these, the family, and that was all Sir Thomas had to see him on his journey.

Not much of a show to be sure, but then the bridge builder had few intimates, certainly not her, no, few intimates, save the one.

She brought his face to mind.

Alan Telfer, his personal secretary, who scarcely bothered to conceal the look of cold disdain in his eyes if she dared to visit Edinburgh and disturb them at their work; this stupid interfering woman, this dowdy squashed creature who witnessed them with their heads together over the sacred drawings.

A fine combination.

But Mister Alan Telfer was missing from the scene due to the undisputed fact that he had, some time ago, blown out his brains.

Quel dommage
. So regrettable.

A dreadful sight to be sure, she remembered.

She had borne witness to so many things.

In truth, there were two participants missing from the scene. Where, she wondered, was the other?

A gust of wind blasted the rain almost horizontally into the face of Reverend Sneddon, and the man of god moved hastily to follow the straggle of departing mourners towards the waiting carriages.

He left a space where piety had endured and through that frame, past the attendant gravediggers who stood patiently biding the time to begin their labour, Margaret saw a shrouded figure in the distance under a threadbare dripping tree.

The inspector. He had come after all. How like the man.

4

And take upon’s the mystery of things,