with an absurdly small helmet, while the other bore a heavy coat and had the rolling gait of an animal new emerged from its lair.
Police, from the uniform of the tall one, but what struck the writer was the unhurried stroll of both, as if they had all the time in the world.
‘Louis?’
Fanny’s voice buzzed in his ear like a wasp and drew him away from the window.
She and his mother Margaret were seated in two armchairs, one ensconced in mourning weeds, the other with a black silk scarf draped round her neck but other than this, more accoutred for a climb
up Arthur’s Seat.
No, he was being unfair, but his wife’s dress sense would never chime with respectable fashion any more than his own. Fanny was a buccaneer; in his imagination he saw her boarding a
grappled ship, cutlass atween the teeth, ready to loose forth rapine and riot –
‘Louis?’
This time the wasp had grown mightily and almost filled the room with angry vibration.
Stevenson lit a cigarette with great care and deliberation, knowing this would provoke but unable to help himself. He had been immured in the family home for days now and felt a most profound
desire to have a tantrum, kick the polished furniture, disgrace himself by passing water in the aspidistra and generally behave like a spoiled child.
‘Yessss?’ he drawled.
The bone of contention was that Robert Louis had decreed that his father’s funeral was to be a grand affair with over a hundred guests and at least forty carriages.
A heartfelt tribute or compensation for a meagre internal mourning?
Not an easy question to contemplate or answer.
The reception would be here, hands shook, heads shaken, plenty of manly forbearance and womanly lace handkerchiefs; then it would be on to the New Calton Burying Ground on the other side of the
city, where Thomas would be laid to rest in a manner befitting a man of constructional bent and strong Christian beliefs.
His own father Robert already lay there with the inscription,
there remaineth therefore a rest in the people of God.
Another lighthouse engineer.
It had, on a recent feverish night, occurred to Stevenson that he might propose the erection of a small pharos near the family vault that would act as a warning beacon ’gainst grave
robbers but he had thought better of it when dawn laid her grey, grim fingers in the sky.
This was the problem.
Stevenson had started the task full of vigour and vim, organising, overseeing, full of the traditional ancestral energy that supposedly descends on the son when his father slips the leash of
life, but Messrs Phlegm and Mucus had begun to follow him round like a black dog, so that he felt every breath was like drowning in a catarrhal mud flat.
Now the arrangements were being borne by his mother, wife, and cousin Bob who was remarkably unaffected by the noxious clime and seemed to have taken over the role as man of the house.
He and Louis had been inseparable as young rascals, but as men grow older they do not necessarily improve, and Stevenson could sense a certain tension. It cut him to the core that fame and good
fellowship do not easily walk hand in hand.
Jealousy lies dormant even in the best of friendships.
Yet for the moment, Bob was captain of the ship, with Fanny an extremely reluctant figurehead as baleful mermaid, and his mother a steady hand upon the tiller.
This image comforted Stevenson, but it had to be admitted that though the crew had accepted responsibility that did not mean they liked the charter.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Not at all.
He came out of this reverie to find the gaze of both women firmly fixed upon him; Fanny smouldering like a pre-eruptive volcano and his mother’s regard tinged with worry that there might
be two funerals instead of just the one.
To augment the point he took a deep draught of his cigarette and coughed like a gutter drain.
Margaret closed her eyes and Fanny narrowed hers. She was well aware of the manoeuvrability of her spouse,
Police, from the uniform of the tall one, but what struck the writer was the unhurried stroll of both, as if they had all the time in the world.
‘Louis?’
Fanny’s voice buzzed in his ear like a wasp and drew him away from the window.
She and his mother Margaret were seated in two armchairs, one ensconced in mourning weeds, the other with a black silk scarf draped round her neck but other than this, more accoutred for a climb
up Arthur’s Seat.
No, he was being unfair, but his wife’s dress sense would never chime with respectable fashion any more than his own. Fanny was a buccaneer; in his imagination he saw her boarding a
grappled ship, cutlass atween the teeth, ready to loose forth rapine and riot –
‘Louis?’
This time the wasp had grown mightily and almost filled the room with angry vibration.
Stevenson lit a cigarette with great care and deliberation, knowing this would provoke but unable to help himself. He had been immured in the family home for days now and felt a most profound
desire to have a tantrum, kick the polished furniture, disgrace himself by passing water in the aspidistra and generally behave like a spoiled child.
‘Yessss?’ he drawled.
The bone of contention was that Robert Louis had decreed that his father’s funeral was to be a grand affair with over a hundred guests and at least forty carriages.
A heartfelt tribute or compensation for a meagre internal mourning?
Not an easy question to contemplate or answer.
The reception would be here, hands shook, heads shaken, plenty of manly forbearance and womanly lace handkerchiefs; then it would be on to the New Calton Burying Ground on the other side of the
city, where Thomas would be laid to rest in a manner befitting a man of constructional bent and strong Christian beliefs.
His own father Robert already lay there with the inscription,
there remaineth therefore a rest in the people of God.
Another lighthouse engineer.
It had, on a recent feverish night, occurred to Stevenson that he might propose the erection of a small pharos near the family vault that would act as a warning beacon ’gainst grave
robbers but he had thought better of it when dawn laid her grey, grim fingers in the sky.
This was the problem.
Stevenson had started the task full of vigour and vim, organising, overseeing, full of the traditional ancestral energy that supposedly descends on the son when his father slips the leash of
life, but Messrs Phlegm and Mucus had begun to follow him round like a black dog, so that he felt every breath was like drowning in a catarrhal mud flat.
Now the arrangements were being borne by his mother, wife, and cousin Bob who was remarkably unaffected by the noxious clime and seemed to have taken over the role as man of the house.
He and Louis had been inseparable as young rascals, but as men grow older they do not necessarily improve, and Stevenson could sense a certain tension. It cut him to the core that fame and good
fellowship do not easily walk hand in hand.
Jealousy lies dormant even in the best of friendships.
Yet for the moment, Bob was captain of the ship, with Fanny an extremely reluctant figurehead as baleful mermaid, and his mother a steady hand upon the tiller.
This image comforted Stevenson, but it had to be admitted that though the crew had accepted responsibility that did not mean they liked the charter.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Not at all.
He came out of this reverie to find the gaze of both women firmly fixed upon him; Fanny smouldering like a pre-eruptive volcano and his mother’s regard tinged with worry that there might
be two funerals instead of just the one.
To augment the point he took a deep draught of his cigarette and coughed like a gutter drain.
Margaret closed her eyes and Fanny narrowed hers. She was well aware of the manoeuvrability of her spouse,
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