Numb (another scene from The Ringed Castle, no plot spoilers, but consider yourselves warned for possibly unexpected brotherly interaction)
The light on the Tay was chrome and lead white, with steel-wool clouds scudding overhead, skittish in the high wind. From the back seat of a government car, one could see the road bridge sweep its elegant arc ahead towards Dundee, lines of grey concrete and grey tarmac punctuated only by the flash of blue from the flags positioned along it at regular intervals. Few people were out on the dour September morning: the locals were content instead to watch the Storm Fiend laugh from within their squat houses, warmed by local oil and gas.
Richard Crawford leaned forwards and touched a finger to his driver's stiff-suited shoulder. "Wait."
He didn't know why, but the lone figure on the walkway made him fearful. A strange superstition, perhaps - or a logical one borne out of the sense of tragedy in the city at that time. He knew that if they drove past, Richard would be haunted by thoughts of that black coat flapping in the wind’s promise of autumn: his mind would wander, unbidden and maudlin, and he would scour the next day's papers with apprehension, expecting a report on a death he might have intervened in.
Would he be disappointed to be proved wrong, if he went back to his hotel and woke the following day to find that no such report came into being? The cormorant-like figure might just have been out for a stroll, with no deeper meaning attached, in no need of saving. But Richard had lately been shadowed by the worry that he was not a good enough man - it was an uncommon fear in his profession, and one that he used to hide better. He found he could not pass the pedestrian without discovering that they were well.
The black car pulled up in the inside lane of the bridge road with hazards flashing, and received a desultory honk from another motorist streaming past. Richard ignored it and got out onto edge of the railed-off walkway. "I'll make my own way back, Tommy," he said to the driver, squinting into the high wind. "It's all right. The fresh air will clear my head."
With enough elegance to salve his pride, Richard pulled himself up to the railing that lined the central reservation. His own herringbone tweed coat flying, he adjusted a fitted trouser leg and hoisted himself over the rail and onto the footpath. The dust and grime from the road and the river that coated the metal was at least dry, and he brushed it from his clothes and hands with boyish relish, thinking of lost days of youthful athleticism on the rugby pitch.
For a moment he thought the figure on the bridge had gone, lost while Richard indulged himself in preening. But no: the other had simply moved further along to lean on the railing. The poised form stood beneath a white pole from which the Saltire flapped and cracked in the tempestuous air, their attention held by the water - searching for the point at which the river blended with the North Sea, where contrary currents stippled the surface with waves and eddies. The pose was casual enough, but little of the face could be seen: they were a silhouette in black boots, black trousers, a long, thick coat with the collar pulled up, and - more puzzling - a mink ushanka glistening under the wind's caress.
Richard rubbed his hands together and blew on red palms and chilly fingers. He had not prepared anything he might utter to the lonely figure, but he was a naturally cheerful man, to whom small talk now came easily through long years of practice - he would find something to say.
However, the words of greeting were blown clean from Richard's lips when he came within a few metres of the other. Behind the stiffened wool collar the head turned and revealed blue eyes the colour of late summer cornflowers. A fine net of filigree lines surrounded them: ghostly traces of a life lived in terms of sternness and judgement. But the slack-lidded stare was as familiar as the back of Richard's own hands, and it brought him up short with a gasp of unexpected joy.
There was no reciprocal leap of the other's heart, apparently, and Richard was left with one hand held in the sky, prepared for an embrace or to clap down on the surface of his brother's scapula beneath its wintry layers. Instead, struck numb by the coolness of the response, Richard was compelled to lower his arm slowly and tuck restless fingers in his coat pockets.
Francis Crawford, also known as the musician Lymond, eyed his brother with sharp defensiveness and did not move in any way to meet the proffered greeting. His forearms were before him as he leaned on the metal railing, the sleeves of his heavy coat ruched up against the surface. His long fingers were laced together, casual and relaxed despite the yellowish hue of his cold skin and the gauze bandage wound around his palms and wrists.
"I stray carelessly perhaps, but it is not enough to make one sing today. Welcome, brother."
Richard's smile endured the mixed emotions that touched his forehead: his brow creased from confusion and hurt to incredulity and back again and he shook his head, affection still warm in his chest. "Thank God you're safe back." His grey eyes dropped to the bandages on Lymond's hands - the only damage he had sustained in the accident on the oil rig - and Richard laid his own grip around on the cold railing, close by Lymond's arm.
It was offered as a prequel to touch, but Lymond actually shuddered as he recoiled. He resettled his arms a foot or so away and loosed a side-eyed glare, his face still concealed by the high black collar. Richard reconsidered what he had heard of the incident - had Lymond not leapt clear of the rig before the worst of the conflagration? Had he not been rescued easily, more easily than any of the poor souls trapped on deck?
"Is there some other hurt?" Richard asked gently.
Lymond's eyes closed momentarily and he exhaled through his nose. Whatever patience he sought seemed enough to allow for Richard to adopt in a similar position, leaning just along the railing from him, trying not to stare at the talc-pale skin of his brother's cheeks.
Ruffled by this treatment and by the wind, Richard turned his face to the Tay, where it curved in a big lazy loop around a green tongue of land and was guided away into the distance by the careful hand of the city on the far bank. He waited for Francis to speak, waited until his hands lost their feeling, and he did not understand why it was so dissatisfying, so peculiarly hurtful when Lymond finally uttered the words "I must apologise."
Yes, I replaced a reference to a psalm with a reference to William McGonagall (who ‘won notoriety as an extremely bad poet’), because you can’t talk about the Tay without bringing up McGonagall. Lymond references A Descriptive Poem on the Silvery Tay: ‘It is enough to make one sing, / While they carelessly do stray, / Along the beautiful banks of the silvery Tay.’ There’s also a nod to The Tay Bridge Disaster: ‘ While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray, / Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay.’
