Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

I found that whenever I looked at Fiona White, I felt something that I didn’t feel with other women. I wanted to protect her, to talk with her. Just to be with her. To watch her laugh. Strange feelings that did not necessarily involve unbuttoning my fly.

Perhaps foolishly, I had made my feelings known to her. I had been in a particularly sentimental mood, having handed over a large amount of money — something to make me misty-eyed at the best of times — to someone for no good reason other than I felt they deserved it more than me. So, giving my shining armour a final polish, I had knocked resolutely on Mrs White’s door and asked to speak to her. Sitting with her in the small kitchen of her flat, I had done all the talking … about what the war had done to us both, about how I felt about her, about how I wanted to put the past behind me — behind us — and how we could perhaps repair the damage in each other. To help each other heal.

She had sat quietly listening to me, a hint of the sparkle that should have been in the green eyes, and when I had finished my declaration of affection she had held my gaze and, without hesitation, given me notice to quit my lodgings.

I had taken that as less than a maybe. I had, of course, tried to talk her round, but she had remained resolutely silent, simply repeating that she would be obliged if I quit my lodgings within the fortnight, as the Brits referred to two weeks. I had been, I have to admit, more than a little dejected. And that in itself told me something about my feelings towards Fiona White. Hard though it was to believe, I had occasionally encountered some women who actually managed, somehow, to find me totally resistible. But this stung.

It had been the day after when I heard a soft knock at the door. Mrs White came in and, standing awkwardly and stiffly, proceeded to tell me that I need not look for new lodgings, unless I had found some already, and that she apologized for having been so brusque. I was relieved to hear it, but the way she delivered it was so impersonal that I felt I should have been taking down minutes. She went on to explain that, while she appreciated that what I had said had been well intentioned, there was no way she would be entertaining the idea of a gentleman friend .

As she spoke, there was a breathlessness in her delivery and I could see the neck above the white collar of her blouse blossom red. I was filled with the urge to rush over to her and kiss the bloom on her neck, but I decided to hang on to my lease instead. When she had finished she asked if I was in agreement and I had said I was and she shook my hand with the tenderness of a rugby-playing bank manager.

But it had been significant. I had known that what she was telling me was that she didn’t want me to go, and her protestations that nothing could ever develop between us had rung less than convincingly.

Over the months since then, we had gradually moved to a situation where I spent the odd evening watching the television I had bought, but had suggested was better kept downstairs, together with Fiona White and her daughters. I had arranged the odd excursion to Edinburgh Zoo or the Kelvingrove Art Galleries, again always with Fiona chaperoned by her two daughters.

I was playing the long game.

In the meantime, there was the usual itch that had to be scratched and scratch I did, as I always had, but with more discretion than before. I had always sensed that Fiona White had me measured as a bit of a bad sort, based on the flimsiest of evidence: like the fact that on one occasion the police had banged on her door in the middle of the night and dragged me away in handcuffs, or the time that a young lady with whom I had recently parted company turned up and created something of a scene. I therefore did my very best to make sure that my liaisons were kept as out of view as possible.

The one major difficulty this presented was the fact that I had guessed Fiona White had always taken mental note of the occasions when I had remained out all night. So, after our heart to heart, I made sure I never stayed away overnight, unless I had given my landlady advance warning, explaining that I had to go away on business. Which it hardly ever was.

Coming home after being with a woman was not something that troubled me, to be honest. It was the difference between men and women, I supposed: women wanted you to remain after intimacy. For the average Scotsman, this was rather like being asked to hang around a football stadium for three hours after the game had ended. What they really wanted to do was get out as quickly as possible so they could get drunk with friends while giving them a summary of the match highlights.

I prided myself on being a little more considerate and sensitive than that, and certainly more discreet, but I did have a habit of finding a reason for getting home. The fact that I usually stayed at least as long as it took to smoke a couple of Players put me up in the ranks of hopeless romantics and continental lovers.

Having said that, I found the idea of waking in the morning with Fiona White on the pillow next to me was a whole different proposition. And somehow a perplexing one.

So, when I returned that evening at seven, instead of going straight up to my rooms I knocked on the Whites’ door and sat with them watching television. Fiona White smiled when she answered the door to me: a small porcelain gleam between the freshly applied lipstick. She smiled more these days. She asked me in and I sat with her, Elspeth and Margaret and watched The Grove Family on television, balancing a cup of tea on the sofa’s armrest. All around me were the signs of my increasing encroachment: the television set itself; a new standard lamp; and, in the corner, the Regentone radiogram that I had bought for fifty-nine guineas and had claimed was too big for my rooms. It all made me feel at my ease and itchingly restless at the same time. If anyone had stepped into that living room, it would have looked like a perfectly normal domestic scene with all of the essential elements of a perfectly normal family.

I was deliberately, inch-by-inch, easing myself into the gap left by a dead naval officer. I had no idea why I was doing it: it was certainly true that I liked the kids, really liked them, and my feelings for Fiona White were deeper than any I had felt for any woman, except perhaps one. But if I had felt sorted out enough, adjusted enough, to make a fist of a normal life, then why hadn’t I already left Glasgow behind and all of the dreck I’d mired myself in and, at long last, taken that ship to Halifax Nova Scotia?

My domestic idyll was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone we shared in the small hallway at the bottom of the stairs that led to my rooms. Fiona White answered it and then called me to the ’phone, a mildly disapproving frown on her face.

‘Hello,’ I said once she had gone back into the living room, closing the door behind her.

‘Lennox?’ It was a voice I didn’t recognize. It sounded like a Glasgow accent, but not as strong as most and a little bit fudged with something else.

‘Who is this?’

Only Jock Ferguson and a few others had my telephone number here. Anyone who wanted me knew to ’phone my office, or find me in the Horsehead Bar.

‘Never mind who I am. You’re looking for information on Gentleman Joe, is that right?’

‘You’re very well informed. And quickly informed for that matter. Who told you I was interested in Strachan?’

‘Are you looking for information or not?’

‘Only if it’s worthwhile.’

‘There’s a pub in the Gorbals. The Laird’s Inn. Meet me there in half an hour.’

‘I’m not going to meet you at short notice at The Laird’s Inn, The Highlander’s Rectum or The Ambush in the Heather. Just tell me what it is you have to tell.’