Part Nine: A GHOST OF A SMILE.

The Gladstone could not exactly be described as the best feature of the elegant Georgian Square in which it sat.It's heyday as a smart Edinburgh Hotel, had been over for a good couple of decades now but there were still some echoes of its pre - war elegance.

Once it had been the haunt of Edinburgh's legal eagles, senior civil servants and even the "India Men" who had returned to the old country after a lifetime of service on the sub continent but, nowadays, you were more likely to find double glazing salesmen and shifty Edinburgh Councillors propping up the bar.

Driscoll, however, had a sneaking admiration for the place although he had seldom frequented the establishment, except for the odd occassion when he was in the vicinity and an excess of alcohol had helped him to overcome his deep seated inferiority complex. Funny isn't it, how bombastic, lifelong bullies will let themselves be intimidated by the little things.

To-night was different though. To-night he was every man's equal for had he not just "put one over" on fate itself?

The alcohol imbibed in various bars in Stockbridge had imbued Driscoll with a surface veneer that was shielding him from the realities of every day life. Even the mirrors in the bathroom kept the truth from him. He had arranged a temporary, charmed existence for himself.

He splashed his face in the sink and the face that he saw looking back from the mirror no longer had the familiar mottled complexion of the lifelong toper. Thirty years, at least, had been stripped away and now he felt a young man's optimism as far as the night ahead was concerned. It was Saturday night, after all, and nothing like the mean and desperate Saturday nights of his recent past either.

As he slicked his hair back he remembered his glory days when Saturday nights were simply a matter of donning your best bib and tucker and a confident smile. After a few drinks anything was possible and he had already had more than a couple of drinks.

After his ablutions were over he settled himself on a stool at the end of the bar and proceeded to do what he had always wanted to and could only now afford, which was to work his way through the malts from left to right along the whole length of the bar's gantry.

After the Balvenie, he bought himself a cigar. It was an appropriate night for a cigar, he thought. It was certainly an expensive cigar but Driscoll, who did not know much about such things, also did not know that this particular item was long past its best.

Still, he took an exaggerated pleasure in rolling the large object between his fingers and watching the progress of the beefy smoke rings as they rose high above him. Then he moved on to the Glenmorangie and after that the Lagavuillin.

Driscoll was pacing himself though. He may not have accrued much knowledge in his journey through this "Vale of Tears" but he knew and respected the malts and would never insult them by guzzling.

He also knew that, given the amount of booze he had already consumed, he stood no chance of getting to the end of the gantry, or even half way, but that was not the point. The point was that he was free to embark upon the adventure. The point was also that his new money, wrenched this very day, from fate's thorny paw would keep him from the aggravations of the world for the forseeable future and, then again, the real bloody point was that he had found a "cosy corner" here in the dear old Gladstone and he would hang on to the effect for just as long as he could.



"I like to see a man enjoy a good cigar".

Driscoll turned from his reverie to see a woman, probably in her mid thirties, and blonde, but not in a particularly provocative way. Her hair was shortish and straight and it framed the delicate features of a face which, if it hadn't carried a hint of weariness, would generally be considered pretty. She held out a slim hand.

"Lesley", she said, simply.

Driscoll stopped rolling the cigar. He was confused. Even in his inebriated state he knew that women like Lesley didn't talk to men like him. Men of his age were invisible to women under forty. It was some sort of unwritten, universal law.

Nevertheless, he looked her up and down while at the same time trying not to let her see him looking her up and down. Besides, he thought slyly, were not all the usual rules set aside for to night?

To night was a universe complete unto itself. The normal mean limitations of the day to day life of an ageing embezzler could not lay so much as a bony finger on this night. Perhaps his new found affluence brought some sheen of suavity to him that could only be picked up by the female of the species. This last thought chased another five years from off his shoulders.

If the haze of alcohol was kind to him, it was also kind to her. It hid her weariness from him. It hid the fact that her sleeveless but demure cocktail dress was frayed around the hem and that there was a small run on one of her black stockings just behind the knee.

None of that mattered though because Driscoll couldn't see it and, anyway, he had already decided that she was a bobby dazzler, a wee honey, a classy dame and so forth but he was still a little mystified, and even suspicious, of her sudden interest in him. It had been a very long time since any woman had even acknowledged his presence in the world and there was something about Lesley that was, at once, distant and tantalisingly familiar. He nodded at her glass which was still half full.

"Will you take a drink lass?"

She was easy to talk to and because of this Driscoll's puzzlement at her interest in him soon faded.From the little that she said on the subject of herself she was a business lady of some sorts up in Edinburgh to close some deal,or other. Driscoll didn't care about the details. She was pretty, she was breathing and she was talking to him in a way that made him feel that, as far as the opposite sex was concerned, he had not quite fallen off the edge of the world just yet.

She sat through his tales of Army life, his struggles to build up a good going business, loss of the same (though he was light on the details here) and his noble struggle to rise Phoenix like from the ashes.

With every twist and turn of this saga, which Driscoll nimbly edited as he went along, her face carried the appropriate expression and when it came to the point where his self serving monologue reached a particularly dramatic high, she thoughtfully laid her slim hand on his and stroked it sympathetically.

Driscoll felt his throat tighten and also a slight prickling behind the eyes. After all, here was a man who, for the best part of a decade, had barely been visible to the world. Here was a man who would have been of little interest to the world even if it could see him. Here was a man who eked out his days as a shadow in a dusty bedsit or a dingy pub lounge and now someone had shone a light into the darkness and her slim hand was, even know, coaxing him out into the world of the living.

He studied Lesley with new eyes but not with lust. He was drunk but he wasn't daft. He knew that the train had left that station a long, long time ago. Sex, as far as Driscoll was concerned, occupied the same amount of space in his head as Greek Mythology. No, he was merely assigning her a place in his own personal small gallery of saints for what she had already bestowed upon him to night.

When he "snapped to" again Lesley was rummaging in her handbag.

"What's the matter sweetheart?"

"My purse. I was going to buy you a drink."

"Don't worry, doll", said Driscoll, the veritable knight errant, "I've got it."

"No but my purse..........and my keys". There was a hint of a wail in her voice which unnerved him.

She looked like a child about to cry and Driscoll noticed her weariness for the first time and suddenly she seemed oddly familiar to him. He felt as if some squirrel was scampering through the attic of his memory, kicking up dust without finding what it was looking for and he was overcome with compassion for this shopworn angel.

"Well, don't fash sweetheart", he said sounding more genuine than he had all evening, "We'll sort something out."