In a League of Their Own

by Millie Gray

  “Very well, sir,” Sam meekly responded, finding it hard to hide his relief that the Pimpernel had been dealt with so lightly. But then Pete and the Deputy had joined the force together and their wives were the best of friends!

  Later, while Sam was checking certain empty dwelling houses off Restalrig Road, he found himself in Cornhill Terrace, a street of substantial stone-built terraced villas. The occupants were all what might be described as middle-class. No child in this street would attend the local Edinburgh Corporation schools. They would be enrolled instead at one of the many fee-paying establishments such as Leith and Trinity Academies or the Royal High. Their fathers would be professional white-collar workers while their mothers (in some cases at least) would employ a woman to do the scrubbing.

  Strolling up the street, Sam noticed that the curtains were invariably drawn securely over the windows – unlike those in Elbe Street, down the road towards the docks, where the working-class folk were so weary sometimes that the very effort of pulling the blinds was beyond them. On his arrival at the next empty dwelling he was due to check, Sam noticed that the house was decidedly out of keeping with the rest of the street. The windows were filthy, the frames were in need of at least one coat of paint and the small front garden was completely overgrown with weeds. Sam stepped up to the front door, lifted the letterbox and shone his torch though. All he could see were dirty bare floorboards but as he took a breath he found himself inhaling a foul, musty, airless odour. Turning to get some fresh air, Sam became aware that the neighbour from upstairs was now standing in the pathway.

  “Evening, sir,” said Sam politely, touching his officer’s cap in respect.

  The man extended his hand. “Leech. Andrew Leech is the name.”

  “Has this house been vacant long?”

  “Too long. The old couple, both well into their nineties, died nearly two years ago. They weren’t able to do much in their last years. Place got run down. Now, no one wants to buy it.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. A shame really, because this is a good address. And the property is solid – stone built in the early nineteen hundreds.” The man sighed. “But nowadays people want just to move straight in and sit down.”

  Sam pondered before asking, “How much do these houses go for?”

  Mr Leech swung his head from side to side, obviously thinking carefully before inviting Sam into his own upper-villa home.

  Sam was impressed with the sweeping staircase that led up to a large, well-carpeted drawing room with an ornate marble fireplace, shuttered windows and velvet tie-backed drapes. Mrs Leech was relaxing on a high-backed chair with her embroidery in her lap. “The house underneath has the same space. Just needs a fair bit of renovation,” explained Mr Leech.

  From the drawing room the two men eventually made their way to the bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. Sam remained impressed. So he should be – for the Leech family had both money and status. He was a retired bank manager and his wife was the only child of a Leith chandler.

  “As I asked before, how much do you think the house downstairs would go for?”

  “Thinking of buying it yourself?” Mr Leech waited for an answer from Sam but as none was forthcoming he continued. “They were asking for thirteen hundred but…”

  Sam shook his head.

  “…I think if someone was to make an offer of, say, eleven hundred because of the deterioration it’s suffering – well, I think the solicitors would advise their clients to accept.”

  “Who are the solicitors?”

  Mr Leech beamed. “Shiels and Mackintosh, just up from your base in Queen Charlotte Street.”

  Sam smiled. He knew now that Mr Leech hadn’t hailed originally from Leith. All Leithers used the old name, Charlotte Street. Never did they say the new name imposed on them by Edinburgh Corporation to distinguish it from their very posh and elegant Charlotte Street.

  Sam couldn’t believe his luck. He had wanted to get Will on his own to tell him about the Cornhill Terrace house – and there he was, strolling up the brae in front of him. Had he first told Carrie about the house, she would have insisted on viewing it, despite the fact there was no way that Will and she could afford it. And that would send her into a foul mood for a good day or two.

  “Will,” Sam called out, quickening his pace, “I want a word.”

  As he unfolded the story about finding this wreck of a house in Cornhill Terrace – which was just a four minute walk from Learig Close – Sam could tell that Will was interested.

  “If only we could get settled on a house before I’m called back to sea.” Will paused and scraped his toes over the ground. “Look, Sam, you do know, don’t you, that Carrie and my Mum… aren’t …well, they’re not exactly at loggerheads but they’re not entirely…”

  “Compatible?” suggested Sam.

  Hunching his shoulders and nodding, Will went on, “Carrie doesn’t know just how hard life can be.”

  Sam chuckled to himself. Did Will Fraser imagine life had been a cake-walk for the Campbells when they were young? Even now, Carrie was still holding down two jobs at once so that she could pay her way. They’d all been taught never to be a burden; and Sam knew they never would be – well, not to him anyway.

  “My brother being killed in the Malta campaign,” Will continued, “was the last straw for my Mum. She seemed to cope with losing my two sisters in the thirties to measles and flu – and then, out of the blue, I came along. She didn’t want a baby at forty-five, and still finds it difficult to be demonstrative to me…but I suppose I filled a gap in her life.”

  “I see,” murmured Sam, as this new light was shed on Will’s mother. “I’ll try and speak to Carrie about giving your Mum more slack. But it’s just that my sister imagines your Mum thinks a lot more of your cousins than she does of you. That hacks Carrie off for sure. Now, about this house?”

  “D’you think we could sneak a look at it?”

  “Your wish is my command,” laughed Sam, giving an exaggerated bow.

  Sam wiped his feet vigorously on the oversized doormat before opening the large half-glazed door of the solicitors’ office. He wondered if either Mr Shiels or Mr Mackintosh was still practising. And he couldn’t make up his mind if it was better to appear to be in the know or just to ask the receptionist for details of the house. He had decided to chance his luck – until he entered the reception area and was confronted by a face he knew: it was elegant Emma Stuart, whose long dark hair complemented an oval face that appeared bejewelled by her sapphire-blue eyes and ruby-red lips.

  “How may I help you?” asked Emma, rising and offering Sam her hand.

  “We-ell,” spluttered Sam, thinking his dialect would sound alien to someone who had obviously been given elocution lessons. “Ye just might. Wondering, I was, if maybe I could get the keys to 105 Cornhill Terrace to have a butcher’s at it.”

  “Butcher’s?”

  “Butcher’s hook. A wee look-see.”

  Emma smiled. “Thinking of buying a house, are you?”

  “Naw. Naw. No me. I’m a bachelor gay. But my twin sister’s getting hitched next week and it’s her that’s needing a roof over her head.”

  Looking towards a glass key cabinet on the wall, Emma pursed her lips. “I’m sure it won’t cause a problem to let you have the keys. But…”

  “It wouldn’t be a risk for ye. I’m in the polis down the road there.”

  Emma smiled. “Yes, I know you are. I saw you last week after my father insisted I should make myself useful by coming into the office here to help out.”

  “Ye’re just helping out?”

  “Yes. Daddy is the senior partner…and, as you can see, all the support staff are absent.”

  Sam looked around at the three unoccupied desks while he waited for a further explanation.

  “It’s that bad influenza epidemic doing the rounds,” divulged Emma as she unlocked the cupboard, selected the keys to 105 and handed them to Sam. “My stint in here i
s finished tomorrow afternoon so I must have the keys back by then.”

  Accepting the keys, Sam winked before saying, “No problem. And, lassie, don’t you fret – discretion is our byword. And thank you.”

  Extending her hand again and grinning, Emma replied, “No. Thank you. You’ve cheered up my day!”

  The looking-over of 105 Cornhill Terrace was not so much a discreet viewing for the interested parties. It was more like a clan gathering for which all tickets had been sold.

  Rachel was the first to speak. “Solid enough house. Just needs… And there’s a nice wee back garden for your washing. So important to be able to hang out your washing.”

  Carrie sighed. That was her mother all over. Everything was just dandy if only you could get your washing hung out to dry. Her mother had even suggested recently that Mrs Anderson in the next stair to her in Learig Close would be canonised when she died simply for putting out such beautiful washings. Carrie had told her mother yet again that she wasn’t fussed about doing beautiful washings – to which Rachel had replied that she had always known Carrie was lacking in ambition!

  Breaking into Carrie’s thoughts, Will’s pipe-smoking father softly suggested, “It’s the potential you have to look at.”

  Carrie beamed him a smile of agreement. He was such a canny highland gentleman: a retired police officer who spoke with a soft engaging lilt.

  “You’d be surprised what soap, water, paint and elbow-grease can achieve,” declared Will’s mother, firing a sardonic look towards Carrie and her husband.

  “Well, Carrie,” asked Will as he squeezed her hand, “what do you think?”

  What did she think? She thought it was just wonderful. It offered a way out of their dilemma. Yes, she could clean this place up. She could even learn how to redecorate the walls without getting paint all over the place. Yet all she could say to Will was, “But can we afford it?”

  A wry smile crossed her fiancé’s face before he conceded, “Probably not. But at least let’s go and inquire.”

  Emma hid her disappointment well when Will and Carrie entered the office to return the keys of 105. She’d been so looking forward to meeting Sam again that she taken great pains over her grooming. There was just something, she felt, that was so magical about him. She had never been so taken with a young man before. He was so refreshing – no airs and graces: just raw, bewitching charm.

  “I don’t suppose there’s anyone who could talk to us about the house, is there?” Will asked.

  Switching on the intercom, Emma promptly announced, “Daddy, there’s a couple here who are interested in the house at 105 Cornhill Terrace. Are you able to see them?”

  Within seconds, Emma’s father opened an adjoining door and beckoned them into the privacy of his inner sanctum where he indicated they should take a seat. In Carrie’s eyes, he looked more like a benevolent confidant than a shrewd lawyer.

  “So you are interested in putting in an offer for 105 Cornhill Terrace?”

  “Not quite,” said Will. “You see, we would like it but we can’t really afford it.”

  Mr Stuart pulled some paper towards him, lifted his pen and sat ready to write. “How much would you be offering?”

  Will hesitated. Carrie just gulped. Neither spoke.

  “The asking price is thirteen hundred pounds,” said the lawyer gently.

  Carrie eyes widened. Sam had told them eleven hundred and fifty at the most! There was no way they could afford this house. She made to stand up.

  Mr Stuart motioned to her to sit down again. “However, I do believe that you wish us to put a bid of eleven hundred to our clients. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. But would we get a mortgage?” Will now looked at Carrie who nodded agreement. “And how much would the legal fees be?”

  For the next five minutes, Will answered all Mr Stuart’s questions. How much did he earn? For it was his earnings alone that the building society would consider, since what the wife earned wouldn’t be counted. And how much would Will be allotting to Carrie?

  Mr Stuart was astute. He altered figures here and there on Will’s salary to allow for his free food on board ship and for standby payments; so that it finally appeared his annual pay amounted to three hundred and thirty five pounds. That meant they could be granted a mortgage of three times that amount – one thousand pounds. The deposit of one hundred and ten pounds they had already almost saved up and, by foregoing some extravagances, they could just about make it. But as for the legal fees – these were beyond the couple’s means. Until, that was, Mr Stuart agreed to allow them to pay his fees up at so much per month over the next year.

  Carrie felt the tears springing to her eyes. Here she was, a wee lassie born in the worst of Leith’s slums, about to become the owner of a house in Cornhill Terrace no less. Then she remembered that no one had said what the monthly mortgage would be. “And h-how much would we have to p-pay the Building Society every month?” she stammered.

  Mr Stuart smiled, “Just seven pounds, three shillings and eight pence.”

  Will winced. Carrie swallowed hard, thinking it might be just pennies to Mr Stuart but to her it was a fortune.

  Rachel was surprised when Carrie withdrew a three-inch wide satin sash and two artificial yellow roses from a paper bag. “What on earth are you going to do with these?” her mother demanded.

  “Sew the roses on to the sash and – see?” said Carrie, lifting up Hannah’s white prayer book and holding the satin ribbon so that it hung down.

  “I don’t understand. You’ve ordered a bridal bouquet of roses for yourself and a posy for Alice. So why d’you need a prayer book as well… and a Catholic one at that?”

  “Simple. I need something borrowed – that’s the prayer book and, because I’ve had to cut back to get the deposit for the house, I went to Dick the florist on Great Junction Street and cancelled the flowers.”

  “But you really wanted to walk down the aisle carrying a bouquet of yellow roses.”

  Sniffing slightly, Carrie added, “Aye, and I was going to go out to Mount Vernon and put them on Granny’s grave before I left on my honeymoon. But know something, Mum? I just know that getting the house will have pleased Granny Rosie more than a bunch of flowers.”

  “It certainly pleases me more,” acknowledged Rachel, who began to wonder if Carrie was at last acquiring a well-overdue dose of common sense.

  7

  CUP FEVER AND COLD FEET

  As Sam turned into C Division’s Headquarters at Torphichen Place, it wasn’t the Co-operative bus standing at the main entrance that he first noticed. No – it was Sandy, the Edinburgh City Police team manager who was standing, arms akimbo, out on the main road. Catching a glimpse of Sam he made such an exaggerated play of consulting his watch that Sam broke into an obligatory sprint.

  “The coo’s tail’s decided to grace us with his presence at long last, eh? So we can mebbe get off now,” Sandy called out as he made towards the bus.

  “Look, I was supposed to finish my shift at five this morning but I didn’t get away until six thirty,” Sam explained defensively.

  “And for why was that?”

  “Well, didn’t some daft numptie decide he could walk on water and tried it at Leith docks. What else could I do but jump in and save him?”

  “Look, laddie! Our leaving for Cambridge on the stroke o eight was o much more importance – so you should just have left him to find out for himself if he was Almighty Jesus or no!”

  Slightly shamefaced but without saying another word, Sam jumped on board to a chorus of derisive howls and whoops from his seated team-mates.

  Following hard on his heels, Sandy allowed Sam to get settled in beside Billy Nicholson who proposed that since Sam had been working all night he’d be better able to get a bit of shut-eye if he took the inside seat. Once all the kerfuffle of seat changing had taken place, Sandy raised both hands for silence and prepared to address his team.

  Billy leant over and whispered in Sam’s ear, “You
listen. This’ll be the bit where Sandy digs up guid auld Robert the Bruce.”

  “Now, lads,” began Sandy impressively, “this week we have the opportunity to cover ourselves in glory.”

  “Told you so!” said Billy, nudging Sam who was already beginning to nod off. “And I bet you he’ll go on with ‘Now’s the day and now’s the hour’: ye ken – the bit where Sandy ‘sees the front of battle lour’.”

  Sam only shook his head and sighed wearily.

  “Oh aye,” continued Sandy, quite oblivious to Billy’s remarks. “Never in the history of the British Cup has a team from Scotland won it!”

  “Just coming now to the wee bit where he requests that we drain our dearest veins and lay the proud usurpers low before finally…”

  “The hopes and wishes of not only all the officers – including our Chief here in Edinburgh City – but the whole of Scotland’s police forces are also behind us!” Sandy paused before uttering solemnly: “Remember, boys, these words from Scots Wha Hae, that urge us to ‘do or die’!”

  “When it comes to dying,” sniggered Billy, “he means he’s going to do himself in if the team don’t deliver the goods!”

  Sam made no reply but wrapped his arms tightly around himself and was fast asleep before the bus signalled it was pulling out and heading for Cambridge. He remained blissfully unaware of Sandy’s final warning – that no alcohol was to be consumed by any team member until after the victory!