Seven Eight Play It Straight (Grasshopper Lawns Book 4)

by EJ Lamprey

  ‘I didn’t think your aunt was so well off.’ Drew got up to get drinks. ‘Wine, as we’re not driving?’

  ‘Aye, but spritz mine. And she’s not mega-rich, ken, but she’s got more than he has. I’m looking forward to seeing them together, so I can check for myself that he’s not only after her money.’ She brought plates over and sat. He dropped a kiss on her glorious hair as he put her spritzer at her right hand and took his place next to her.

  ‘So which of our old movie stars does he look like?’ he asked with interest—the two of them shared a passion for the classic films shown at the Onderness Hippodrome—and she giggled.

  ‘He’s not really the film star type, but he shounds like Shir Sean Connery. And even more like her first husband. I honestly don’t know how she copes with that, it gives me the willies to keep expecting to see Uncle James every time he says something. He even smokes the same cigars. You’ve met him, you know, so that tells you how memorable he is. Anyway, he is a nice man, and she’d likely have died in that singles investigation if he hadn’t been so keen on her. Have to be grateful to him for that.’

  He nodded and bit into his sandwich with good appetite. ‘So we’ll be the only ones under thirty, then?’

  ‘Never mind under thirty, under fifty. Do you mind? Hanging out with people so much older, I mean? You will like them, I think. I do.’

  ‘I don’t really think of your aunt as old; when I look at her I see what you’ll look like along the line, which is why I’m happy to hang around. She’s good advertising for you. And I am really looking forward to meeting William. I saw him wade into a pub fight once, must be nearly ten years ago. He was already pretty grizzled, walked with a stick, but he sorted it out in two minutes flat. Picked one guy up by the scruff of his neck, and didn’t even seem to notice there was another guy clinging to his back like a monkey. Funniest thing I ever saw, but pretty impressive.’

  ‘Touch of hero worship?’ she teased and he grinned back.

  ‘Short-arses like me like to hang around bonny coppers and big guys who can stop trouble. Makes us feel safe.’

  ‘Well, William walks with two sticks now, as often as not. Not in a feeble way, he still strides along, and he picked Edge up once as if she was a feather. He could probably still stop a fight. He looks like a retired circus strongman who ate his own barbells. Talking of which, how are the arrangements going with the circus?’

  ‘Let’s get going, I’ll tell you on the bus, but all sorted. Your carriage awaits; well, in four minutes, by my watch, it will. ’

  He put their plates in the sink, slung a shoulder bag filled with William Robertson’s books over his shoulder, and grinned at her, as excited as a boy.

  Royal Mile, Edinburgh

  Rory Wilson takes the stage

  Although Edge’s mood had improved, she still wasn’t having a good Festival outing. The crowds were thickening as the afternoon wore on and Brian, a hard-core hill walker and climber, simply couldn’t seem to adjust to meandering. As he had firmly reclaimed her hand as they started down the Mile, she had little choice but to keep up, despite some extremely promising artists dotted along the road. She finally got him to pause again for the others to catch up, and they idly watched some singers in soi-disant Sergeant Pepper outfits setting up on a bandstand. To her slight horror, she suddenly realized why they were familiar and stepped smartly behind Brian, pulling her peak lower down her face.

  ‘What, one of your lovers?’ he tried to make his voice teasing but she coloured, annoyed. Sylvia’s malicious crack about a series of men couldn’t have been more perfectly designed to bring out Brian’s worst flaw.

  ‘No—Kirsty’s ghastly ex-boyfriend Rory.’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked at the band with interest. ‘The bald sweaty one? I can see why you wouldn’t want him as a nephew-in-law. I’m quite surprised at her.’

  ‘No, idiot. The good-looking one. He’s left umpteen phone messages for me, asking me where she’s living now, I don’t want to have to talk to him. Let’s walk on a bit.’

  ‘You were the one who wanted to wait. Dinna fash, he’d never see you in this crowd. Quite the difference,’ he remarked as she moved sideways to put a bronze statue between herself and the bandstand, ‘between him and Drew, I mean. I like Drew.’

  ‘Yes, so do I. There’s no comparison between the two; Rory is self-obsessed to the point of being delusional. He certainly deludes himself that he’s the greatest undiscovered singing talent in history.’

  ‘That’s very harsh,’ the statue told her in a sepulchral voice, putting a heavy hand on her shoulder, and she ducked away, gasping. Brian swung round angrily, then started to laugh and insisted on a photo of them together.

  ‘They get me every time.’ She shook her head as she came back to his side. ‘You’d think I’d know by now, any human-sized statue on the Mile is suspect during the Festival!’

  ‘He’s very good, I didn’t realize either. And your face!’ Brian put his arm round her shoulders and squeezed. ‘Stay next to me, where it’s safe.’

  Before she could respond the band began to play and Rory stepped up to the microphone, cast a sombre, meaningful look at the patchy crowd, and began to sing a nostalgic Seventies hit.

  ‘He’s not bad,’ Brian said judiciously, and Matilda, who had appeared at his shoulder with a still-sulky Sylvia in tow, shot him an astonished look.

  ‘Not bad? He’s wonderful! Oh, he’s singing the wrong stuff, but I dreamed of finding a voice like that to sing my stuff in my day. And those looks! Thirty years ago he’d have been mobbed.’ Her voice trailed off as she stared raptly at the street stage until the song ended. There was a spattering of applause and she sagged slightly as she turned back to the others, the animation fading out of her face. ‘That’s the worst thing about being seventy. You can’t press your card on a talent like that and tell him to call you.’

  ‘Matilda, you’re full of surprises, I had absolutely no idea you were a songwriter.’ Edge realized slightly guiltily that she had never bothered to find out what Matilda’s interesting background was, and only partly because she’d never met her out of Sylvia’s company. Sylvia always demanded centre stage. Matilda was so—beige.

  She smiled faintly. ‘Oh yes, not that my songs were always performed as they should have been. Still, they pay for my cruises. If he’d been around in my time—well, even now, if he’d let me write for him. What a shame.’

  ‘Edge knows him. Ouch!’ Brian added as Edge stood on his foot, too late.

  Matilda looked at Edge sharply and even Sylvia, who had been staring at the handsome young singer, gave her a sidelong glance.

  ‘Matilda, I do know him, but he’s awful. Really. You could be the best songwriter in the world but you can’t write the sort of stuff he thinks he’s best at, and he’s an opinionated, conceited git. I’ve been dragged off to hear him perform his own stuff before and I’d more happily listen to a donkey braying. I’ll grant you he’s better doing ballads, but look at the face on him! He’s sneering at the only audience he’s ever attracted.’

  ‘Don’t sit on the fence, Edge, tell us what you really think,’ Sylvia sniped, but Matilda hushed them as Rory swung back to the microphone, water bottle in hand, and launched himself into a version Edge had never heard before of another well-covered Seventies song.

  Even she had to admit it was good, but Matilda flushed vividly as she listened.

  ‘That’s one of mine,’ she said simply as he finished, ‘and that’s how it was written.’

  ‘Oh, hell.’ Edge looked at her helplessly. ‘Do you really want me to set up a meeting?’ Matilda nodded mutely, and she shrugged resignedly. ‘Okay. What name did you write under?’

  She only vaguely recognized the name Bluecover but Brian’s eyebrows shot up and he looked impressed. She pushed forward through the crowd towards the stage, which was a substantial affair, lifting the players about three feet above street level.

  ‘Rory!’ She had to call again before he spotte
d her and dropped to his haunches to bring them close enough to talk. His expression became guarded as he recognized her.

  ‘Hey, Edge. How ya doing? Long time no see.’

  ‘That Bluecover song you did.’ She wasted no time on insincere pleasantries. ‘You like her work?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he shrugged. ‘Had its day, innit? Suits my voice, but. Good for warm-up songs, gets the crowd going.’

  ‘And then they really get going when you do your own stuff.’ She was ruthless. ‘They get going straight out the door. I could set up an introduction to Bluecover, she likes your voice. Interested?’

  ‘Yeah? She still alive? Whatever. Hey, where’s Kirsty at these days? She moved.’

  ‘Rory.’ Edge was fed up with being jostled, and was getting a crick in her neck from looking upwards. ‘For once in your life, stop being an idiot for long enough to hear a good offer. Do you want to meet Bluecover?’

  He hesitated, staring down in her face, then nodded. She dug in her handbag for one of her cards and passed it up to him. ‘That’s got my mobile number. Call me, I’ll set it up. Tomorrow morning. Not too early.’

  ‘Okay. And Kirsty?’

  ‘Kirsty’s with someone new.’ She started to turn away, then stopped abruptly. ‘Do you sing “Don’t Be Jealous”?’

  ‘Oh aye, ken, but that’s not a Bluecover song.’ He looked confused and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘No, but I suddenly thought it’s something you might sing quite well.’

  ‘We don’t usually do requests like, Edge. But okay. And—thanks.’

  As she started back a middle-aged man paused to let her pass, and they exchanged polite smiles. Brian put his arm possessively round her shoulders as she reached his side, then quirked a brow as Rory started the familiar ballad. The crowd around the bandstand thickened noticeably. He did sing it well.

  ‘Did you ask him to sing that?’ Brian dropped his voice and she nodded, unsmiling. ‘Okay, I’ll try. Promise.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ She bumped him gently with her shoulder. ‘You’ve no need to be. I only hope he doesn’t track down where Kirsty lives now, and serenade her with this instead of his own rancid muck. He’s not bad, is he? Very nearly as good as he thinks he is, when he’s singing this stuff.’

  ‘Su-perb,’ Brian agreed, pronouncing it the Scottish way, drawn out with a rolled r, and Sylvia, overhearing, gave him an odd look.

  ‘Hardly superb,’ she objected, correcting his pronunciation, and he shook his head.

  ‘It’s not quite the same word in Scotland,’ he said briefly. ‘Here it means good, even very good, but we use it a lot more than you do down south.’

  She suddenly remembered she’d taken the huff with him and looked away, radiating boredom.

  He shrugged off the cooler box and opened it to share out water and grapes, then suggested Matilda sit on it and she sank down gratefully. The crowd deepened around the bandstand and the breeze faltered in the heat of late afternoon. The band was surprisingly good, and Edge, realizing the others were enjoying themselves, resigned herself to waiting. Fretting slightly that her nose was probably turning pink despite the sunscreen carefully applied hours earlier and the tiny shade of the purple peak, she moved into the more substantial shade offered by an overhang, absently eating grapes from her fist as she watched her companions rather than the stage. She’d learned something extraordinary today about a woman she’d known for three years. What else didn’t she know about them?

  Brian, now openly acknowledged as her lover, was smiling slightly at the stage, eerily familiar in some ways, totally alien in others; tactless, athletic, jealous, the quality she disliked most. She’d never examined her motives for keeping their affair secret, and couldn’t quite define how she felt now that it was exposed. Sylvia, still sulky, immaculate despite the heat in a crisp white blouse, pink linen culottes and impossible pink and white heels, was very upright but so tiny her frosted waves barely reached Brian’s shoulder. She had donned black wraparound sunglasses and had removed the peak earlier to stuff it in her bag, one of those fortunate Englishwomen who tan quickly and effortlessly to a golden brown, yet never show any signs of skin damage. Matilda, by contrast to her vivid friend and neighbour, was baggy in a coffee-on-beige shift dress, her only colour her peak and the unfamiliar flush in her cheeks as she held her camera up to record the singers.

  Edge’s idle attention sharpened as she realized Matilda was otherwise unusually pale. She left the shade to touch Brian’s arm warningly as Rory stepped back from the microphone and told the crowd the band would take a few minutes break.

  ‘Brian, we have to get a taxi to where we’re meeting the others. Matilda, is the heat getting to you? Can we drop you off at the station on the way?’

  ‘I’m ready to go back, I’m bored rigid,’ Sylvia nodded instantly. ‘Matilda?’

  Matilda lowered her camera and agreed in her quiet way that perhaps they should be on their way. She swayed slightly as she stood up, and Brian shouldered the cooler box before offering her his arm with a quick concerned glance.

  ‘This way. It’s steep, but it’s a shortcut to where we can get a taxi. These alleys and wynds are amazing.’ He became uncharacteristically garrulous as he led them down a narrow little close barely wide enough for them to walk abreast. ‘Back in the day this area became quite the ghetto. Terrible plague problems. The city council drained the loch, paved over closes very like this one, and built upwards and outwards well over a century ago. Have you ever been to Mary King’s Close?’ She shook her head faintly and he looked back over his shoulder at Edge and Sylvia. ‘Either of you?’

  ‘I have.’ Edge grabbed Sylvia’s elbow to steady her as the petite woman’s unsuitable heels skidded on the old cobbles. ‘A few years ago, when my American friends were over. I was in a cold sweat because I’m ridiculously claustrophobic, but it was interesting.’

  ‘Never heard of it. Mary King?’ Sylvia clutched Edge’s arm convulsively, her talons digging in painfully. ‘These bloody cobbles!’

  Brian hesitated, obviously debating whether to give Edge the cooler box and offer Sylvia his other arm. Instead he said, ‘One of the closes that was built over. It’s been excavated and restored as a tourist attraction. When I went down visitors still had to wear hard hats, but it’s quite safe now. You should do the tour. It’s an experience.’

  Edge shuddered. ‘All of that. I was hanging back in the close while the rest of the tour crowded into one of the houses, because I’m not crazy about crowds in enclosed spaces. Dim lighting, typical for the period, and when you look around you see eyes gleaming in the shadows. Fake, but they reckoned the rats back in that time were the size of cats. And there must have been hidden speakers, I could hear street sounds, very faintly—kids playing, and street vendors shouting, even the occasional faint shout of gardyloo. I thought I’d gone all psychic, for a few horrible moments, and was tuning into the ghosts.’

  ‘There are no speakers.’ Brian frowned, puzzled. ‘I think you were tuning.’

  ‘Oh, ha-ha,’ she said crossly and he laughed.

  ‘Ghosts? They buried people in there when they paved it over?’ Sylvia shot a glance over her shoulder and despite the steep slope moved a little closer to Brian and Matilda.

  ‘Plague,’ he explained cheerfully. ‘Buildings boarded up with the dying inside, but that was earlier. There’s one little girl ghost who was walled up in her house—she told a psychic doing the tour that she was looking for her dolly. Ever since then tourists have taken down dolls and toys for her. Her room is full of them, and the overflow is given to the children’s wards in the hospitals.’

  ‘Don’t forget the infamous daylight tax.’ Edge finally realized he was trying to distract Matilda, who, in the breeze-less close, was looking close to collapse as they descended the final flight of steps. ‘People boarded up their own windows rather than pay the window tax. Some people say that’s where the phrase “daylight robbery” comes from. Not that there would have been muc
h daylight, the buildings were the first skyscrapers ever built, seven floors and higher. All your fault, Sylvia, you English. We had to have city walls to protect ourselves against you, but the city kept growing. It had to grow either up, or down into the ground, and it did both. Streets no wider than this one, with buildings stretching up into the sky, so not much light would have got through.’

  ‘Oh aye, you can reach out and touch both sides when you’re walking down some of them, even the ones still in the open. This one’s quite the avenue, allowing us to walk in pairs.’ Brian was still enthusiastic as they stepped out of the gloomy close into the sunlit lower road and he flagged down a taxi. ‘I’m not much for spelunking, but I’d spend hours quite happily poking round the hidden town. Not the tourist bit, that’s a bit too slick and jolly for me now, but mebbe get involved in some of the exploring. Definately up for that come winter, when the climbing season’s over.’

  ‘Whatever rocks your boat.’ Edge gave an involuntary shudder at the thought as she followed Sylvia and Matilda into the recesses of the black cab.

  ~~~

  Matilda insisted she would be fine with Sylvia’s help and the two women headed into Waverley Station without a backward glance, Sylvia very erect and with her hand under Matilda’s drooping elbow, slightly resentfully carrying the empty cooler box in her free hand.

  Brian shrugged, swivelled in the jump seat to give the driver the new address as Edge moved across to the bench seat, then joined her, dropping his arm across her shoulders as he sat down. ‘God, I thought we’d never be alone.’

  Edge caught the taxi-driver’s quick amused glance in his rear view mirror and blushed faintly. ‘We’re not alone, Brian, do give over. And you insisted on spending the last two nights with me! Not to mention joining me for part of the holiday, you numpty.’