Part Eight: THE EVENING'S VELVET EMBRACE

The day had, so far, ticked along quite nicely for Miss Elizabeth Laird in the small, but exclusive, hat shop that she managed in the City's West End.

No alarms or excursions. No returns and no awkward customers. And.......she had managed to sell that orange monstrosity that Lachlan, her boss, had insisted that she place slap bang in the middle of the window as if it was, somehow, the Rolls Royce of all hats.

Lachlan, she thought, was certainly an intelligent man, but he did not know hats and she fervently hoped that he was better at picking restaurants and simpered at the thought of the evening that stretched out ahead of her, sweet and velvety with promise.

And the last of the business day continued to tick uneventfully away, seasoned by the odd moment of conjecture about what the hours ahead might hold.

In due course, Miss Laird bade her assistant good night, locked up the shop and was walking home along William Street toward her evening of adventure.

The invitation had come as a complete surprise to her and had been delivered in such a casual way that she had been sure that her ears had deceived her. She had certainly doubted that it was a bona fide date but then, she reasoned, surely nobody invites a girl to dinner on a Saturday night unless it was a date. Surely?
No, of course not. That speck of doubt was stamped further into the dust with every step.

She exuded confidence now. She was fully prepared to join the ranks of the loved to-night. She knew that Lachlan was fond of her and, for her part, she had long been ready to make that jump from friend to lover. She had seen it happen to others. Why shouldn't it be her turn?

What was so strange about Elizabeth Laird finding a place among the needed of this world and why should she not be rescued from the constant rattle of her own thoughts?

Her compassion had time, though, even amid the jangle of her own excitement, for those for whom this April evening would be just another evening but, at the same time, she already considered herself apart from them. She no longer numbered herself among the grey, anonymous crowd who you didn't notice even when you were in the middle of their throng for, had she not just rejoined the ranks of those who were truly alive?.



It was the old, pre epiphany Driscoll that woke again just after six that evening. His blistered heart had now found room for yet another grudge. Now it railed against fate itself. Well, who among us could blame him for that?

How many of us, in times of inner turmoil, have "knelt" before fate and offered this sacrifice, or that, in return for things going our way for a little while, only to have the gesture flung back in our faces - in this way or that? It's too much isn't it? You feel such a fool don't you?

Standing over by the window, Driscoll sucked on a Capstan Full Strength and watched the retreating sun follow its pre ordained path.

"Sun King", he snorted, "the bastard!"

Well, he thought, if that was the way it was going to be, he would go his own way and fate could %*&%%^" well suit itself. After all, if fate had thwarted him, you could argue that he had also poked fate in the eye. He had money now did, he not? How did fate know that he had not been playing a double bluff? How did fate know that he, Driscoll, had not slipped one past it? No, all in all, he reckoned that know all fate had, this time, shot itself in the foot.

Driscoll ran his discoloured tongue around parched lips. The way he saw it he was bankrolled for the rest of this year anyway and the good times would start just as soon as he had a shot of whisky and got washed and changed.



In a room along the hall, Elizabeth Laird, spinster, 42, showed a good deal more grace as she waited for the evening and her new life to begin. She had just had a bowl of soup to settle her stomach and was now sipping a dry sherry to steady her nerves.

It seemed to work. The Chinese Acrobat in her stomach had stopped turning somersaults anyway and now she relaxed as she was confident that she would hear the main doorbell from her room and that, in just a few minutes, she could be downstairs opening it before some helpful soul could let him in to see the depths of the squalor to which she had sunk.

It was only fair. This house was not part of her so why should it be allowed to cling to her like some malignant shadow. Its dilapidation and general air of melancholy and failed lives could only muddy the waters between Lachlan and herself.

Still, now that she stood firmly on the path that would lead her away from this room, she could allow herself a certain aesthetic pleasure in the beauty that the fading sun brought to its slow leaving of it.

That same sun, so detested by Driscoll, here ennobled burnished wood, faded fabric and even her own reflection in the mirror on the door of the wardrobe. All pleasingly melancholic, she thought, but only if you had a brighter world to escape to.

So there sat Miss Elizabeth Laird, spinster, 42, manageress of the most respected hat shop in the whole of Edinburgh......a child dressed in her best frock and waiting to be invited to the party.

At exactly 6.59 p.m.........

......Driscoll was secreting his ill gotten gains under a pile of soiled clothing at the bottom of the wardrobe in his room.

.......Josef Straczynski was listening to an elderly, scratched recording of the Polotsvian Dances and drifting in and out of sleep between the present and that long lost other world.

............Miss Laird sat patiently in her room, her hands clasped, as if in prayer.

At exactly 6.59 the phone in the hall rang.



At this point I feel that I must step into the fray to protect this decent lady's finer feelings for, as you have probably guessed, the phone call was not bringing the sort of news that Miss Laird wanted to hear.

The "date" was, after all, just a business meeting. Lachlan, knowing that her social life was almost non existent - though she had gone to great and devious lengths to hide this fact - thought he would treat his valued employee to a nice dinner while he slipped in a few promotional ideas that he wished her to implement over the next few months.

In Lachlan's tidy mind that would save time spent on the subject later and also give her a Saturday night away from the radio and Saturday Night Theatre. He was a decent sort but not especially perceptive. He had no idea that she was smitten, mainly because he was a modest sort of a man and that was one of the chief reasons that she WAS so smitten with him.

I will cut a long story short. An ex Army chum of Lachlan's had phoned to say that he was in town for the week - end and Lachlan being loyal to his friends, another trait that Elizabeth valued greatly, decided that, to-night, that was where his loyalties lay.

He apologised profusely, of course, and assured Elizabeth that it was only a postponement and that they would have the chance to "cook the books over some chow some time soon."

She had managed to keep any suggestion of a quaver out of her voice while she was still holding the phone but any resolve not to let "the whole bloody fiasco" get her down lasted only as long as it took her to get back to her room and close the door on the rest of the world.

Once safely there, she settled herself in front of a bottle of Copper Beech Sherry and drained it in the course of the next 90 minutes, while marvelling at her ability to cry so much without succumbing to dehydration.